A familiar quote, “Get up, dress up and show up.” is attributed to author Regina Brett. It has entered my head and helped me start more than a few days through tough times. I have heard myself remind colleagues of the sentiment. We all have tough times, and we find different ways to keep moving forward.

Toward that goal of moving forward: in line with some of the ideas I have presented in these postings and influenced by a recent conversation with a friend, I have created a personal ‘work’ version of Brett’s solid three-part direction.

1. Shape up: Before showing up anywhere, one must “shape up:” focus at least a little time on getting one’s head into the approaching day. Once your feet are on the floor and you’re looking the part – and before you greet others in your day – get your head into it all.

2. Set up: Set a goal for those encounters you may have with people during that day. Three good possibilities:

• Listen well and get to mutual understanding to address an issue.
• Clear the air: have a necessary difficult conversation focused on respect and treating each other well.
• Learn something new from someone you didn’t expect to be your teacher / because your mind was open to growth.
3. Lift up: Simply share kindness because you choose to do so. If you will speak with others via telephone or other devices, setting goals is equally as important. It will matter that you’re smiling when you pick up the phone. It will matter whether you’ve decided to listen well and to treat the other party with respect – or not. In defiance of all the known laws of gravity, lifting another’s spirits often raises our own.

I have heard it said that sometimes life simply hits one in the head. While that may be true, I think this straightforward plan could help each of us focus, learn something and even grow along our way.

Once upon a time individual employees quit bad bosses.  Attentive leaders could notice a trend, identify the problem (i.e., the bad boss) and make decisions: coach, train, transfer (!), threaten, discipline, ignore, etc.  Of course some of these decisions led to better outcomes than others in terms of managing employee turnover and the impact of a bad boss.

Recent research tells us those bygone days may be over.  In our modern era, individual employees quit bad organizations:  whole companies with negative cultures see good employees leave.

Turnover is no longer dependent upon individual bosses who treat employees poorly.  Turnover is about what the organization – and individuals throughout the organization – do to demonstrate and support the culture described in the employee handbook or in ads directed at customers.

Answer quickly:

Can you easily match the ads you hear and see about your own organization with the behaviors demonstrated by and toward employees all around you each business day?  Is that match strongly positive?  In other words, do individuals throughout your organization ‘walk the talk?’

One key issue to consider: are there talented and productive – yet negative and toxic – individuals in your work teams?  What have you done to address the problem so that talented and productive – positive and thriving – individuals are willing to stay?

If you need additional convincing that toxicity in the workplace is more than an interpersonal conflict to be ignored or avoided, the Harvard Business School’s Toxic Workers study concluded that avoiding a toxic employee can save a company more than twice as much as the revenue bringing on a star performer can add.

It isn’t ‘just’ your Culture that suffers from toxic workplace behaviors.  It’s your bottom line.  Now is as good a time as any to:

• Affirm your desired workplace Culture.
• Assure every employee knows what that Culture looks like in everyday workplace actions.
• Actively reinforce your expectations throughout the organization. No one is above Cultural workplace expectations, and everyone will be held accountable to them.
• Announce, as you make changes in support of your desired Culture, showing that expectations are real and mean business.

Think about these findings reported in Susan Pinker’s book, The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier and Happier:

• Smaller groups that communicated face-to-face were more cohesive. There was more trust within the group, which made it easier for people to ask questions and seek help when they needed it. As a result, those groups were more productive.
• Want to be happier and more productive? Take your breaks at the same time as your friends at work do. This boosted performance, increased smiling and made the company that participated in the study an extra $15 million.
• When people connect— and especially when they touch each other— oxytocin is released, which damps down their stress and enables them to trust each other… A simple handshake, a pat, a fist-bump, a friendly nudge, or a high five does the trick. All evidence points to social contact lowering stress among colleagues and making a team more cohesive

What are some simple ways to build these productivity-boosting social interactions into your work place?    Consider:

• If you’re tempted to drop a quick email message, don’t do it. Even if its efficiency is sorely tempting. Instead, get out of your work space and walk across the office. Smile and speak to the people you see.  Shake hands with colleagues who’re available.  Deliver that message or ask that question in person.
• When you’re planning a meeting, don’t gloss over the opportunity for participants to interact. Build time for conversation, connecting and hand shaking into the agenda.
• Missing colleagues who work remotely? Build some trust by connecting with them through a video chat.
• Had your nose to the proverbial grind stone completing a project? Reward yourself by taking a break with colleagues.  Encourage others to regularly do the same.

Think about the productivity impact as well as the social value in these personal connections.  Think about the long-term trust you’re building in such simple ways.  Could there be better, more rewarding or less expensive ways to increase productivity and trust?

By description, a business process is a set of activities that, once completed, will accomplish an organizational goal.  Likely several processes come to mind as you consider this description: sales, marketing, finance/accounting, product development, etc.

Now think about compliance.  Rather than viewing compliance as a burden, an extraneous requirement or waste of time, instead consider the ways in which compliance, when well managed as a business process, helps accomplish a variety of business goals:

• Affirmative Action or Equal Employment Opportunity compliance supports innovation: diversity of customers and markets supporting organizational growth
• Selection/hiring compliance supports staffing: the right people with the right skills in the right positions to meet customer and business goals
• Wage & hour compliance supports organizational stability and corporate citizenship: regulatory updates are managed with a reduced threat of disruption or legal challenge.

Meeting external, statutory requirements (i.e., compliance) as a routine business process:

• Supports a culture of positive employee engagement and trust
• Frees employees throughout the organization to focus on the business rather than on covering or explaining marginal activities or wondering where perceived gray lines may be
• Focuses resources on planning and implementing what is or can be known and
• Avoids the turmoil, expense and bad press of potential legal challenges.

The Road to Abilene (aka the Abilene paradox) is Dr. Jerry B. Harvey’s 1974 parable about a family trip to Abilene.  In that classic story about the results of group think, members of a family make a miserable trip across the hot desert in a car without air conditioning just to eat bad cafeteria food.  They could have stayed home enjoying conversation and cool drinks in the shade.

This group think paradox brings to mind a statement attributed to Malcom Muggeridge, “Only dead fish swim with the current.” The quote brings other pictures to mind and Muggeridge is right.  In hundreds of scuba dives, one has seen that it is the healthy fish who face the current, looking for food and moving around the reef.  Bigger fish find their healthy places in bigger currents.

Now create for yourself a mind picture of the mission of the Giraffe Heroes Project: to move people to stick their necks out for the common good: to do the right thing for others (my emphases).

What a contrast!

With these mind pictures formed, let’s reinforce some principles:

• In the next meeting in which an executive says, “It would be great if…”, stop and think.
  • Your organization pays you, as it does other manager/leaders, to think.
  • Thinking is the valuable process.
  • Not valuable is taking that long hot trip to Abilene and finding only misery at its end.
• Teachers who told you in school that if you had a question, others likely had the same question were right.
  • Ask the question(s).
  • Be the hero who sticks her neck out to focus everyone away from ‘going along to get along.’
  • Help your colleagues confirm that the idea supports strategy; that critical resources are available; that timing is good. Or, help everyone avoid misery.
• Don’t participate in the ‘watching and hoping.’
  • Challenging ideas, asking questions and matching plans with strategy are valuable actions that focus organizational resources and lead to creative, productive solutions.
  • Helping everyone succeed and avoid misery is each leader’s opportunity and challenge.

Paraphrasing Jim Collins, going along to get along is not why your butt is in that manager/leader seat on that particular bus.  Swim healthy against the current.  Be a giraffe.

What if you are a manager and you hear one of your employees say he is having trouble getting to work on time every day because of some medical appointments?  Dare you ignore the remark?  Is it a trigger to start an intentional conversation with that employee?  If so, how hard could that really be?  Turns out, it can be painstaking, and it can be critically important.

This employee may have just begun the critical conversation (aka the interactive process) required by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).  The requirement for an interactive process is unique to the ADA.  The process can be difficult to start, to do well and to maintain.  Both the individual with a disability and the employer are required to communicate in good faith regarding reasonable accommodations, once conversation has determined that there may be performance issues related to a disability.

In your conversation provide the employee an opportunity to explain the reason that an accommodation is required due to a medical condition.  From that point, explore every potential accommodation that is suggested.  Remember that under the guidelines, an employee does not get to demand one, one particular or even “the best” solution.  Neither is it good practice for a manager to enter the conversation with preconceived notions about the employee, the medical condition, limitations or potential accommodations.  Books have been written and court cases decided when either party tries to draw a proverbial line in the sand.  It may be useful to invite the employee to complete an initial questionnaire to help him prepare for a conversation with you: to collect his thoughts and generate some creative options.

Examples of reasonable accommodations range widely and may include equipment, leaves of absence, changes in work schedule, job reassignment to an available and suitable job, restructuring of nonessential job functions, modified workplace policies, etc.  Often, the best accommodation involves a little creativity from both parties and need not be costly.  In one situation, a yoga mat and time to stretch throughout the day was all an employee needed to address a chronic back pain issue.

The interactive process does not end with the first conversation.  Periodic follow up with the employee is good practice to maintain productivity and engagement and to ensure that any accommodation is effective.

Internal resources include knowledge of requirements of the ADA, the business and the employee’s role in it and good job descriptions.

Outside resources such as the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) and the U.S. EEOC Enforcement Guidance on Reasonable Accommodation and Undue Hardship Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (October 27, 2002) may also be useful.

• Be aware of the ADA and its requirements.
• Maintain job descriptions that focus on essential functions.
• Train managers to have effective conversations: to ask questions about reasonable accommodations and not about the medical condition or disability.
• Meet and converse periodically with the individual and document the conversations.
• Repeat as necessary to assure any accommodation continues to be effective and reasonable.