Who’s The Toughest Boss in the US? You see these headlines in business magazines all the time. But what interesting from a business perspective is not Who but Why? Does a tough love boss generate better results that a compassionate one? Do all cultures use this as their yardstick when judging CEOs and leaders?

Why We Champion Tough Bosses

Before we assess their performance, we need to examine for a moment why we do this. Indeed, maybe it’s the way we champion ‘tough’ bosses rather than looking at ways to bring people together is our fault.

Personally, I find something very odd about this tendency to admire managers who make aggression their calling card as opposed to say… creativity, innovation, or motivation.

One needs to balance the carrot and the stick but surely it’s the results that count.

Seeing Both Sides makes this point when reading Jack Welch’s columns in Business Week, called “The Welch Way”.  In “Tough Guys Finish First” Welch writes in answer to the question, “Do tough bosses really get more out of their people?”, a simple answer:  “yes”. 

He argues that the right boss is tough as in tough-minded: 

“They set clear, challenging goals. They connect those goals with specific expectations. They conduct frequent, rigorous performance reviews. They are relentlessly candid, letting everyone know where they stand and how the business is doing. Every single day, good tough bosses stretch people. They ask for a lot, and they expect to get it…Weak performers usually wish these bosses would go away. People who want to win seek them out.”

I’m included to agree with Jack but… it’s how one goes about this is the issue at least in the office.

1. Connect goals with specific expectations – the key word here is specific. Poor managers are (deliberately?) vague or unable to define goals in specific terms. I heard one boss complain that he ‘felt’ his line manager wasn’t performing well. How do you answer that?
2. Relentlessly candid – the key here is to be forthright but not scathing or derogatory of others efforts. My personal feeling is that people want to do the right thing but sometimes they screw up. We all do. It’s how mgt react to this that needs addressing. I’ve seen people torn apart in meetings for relatively minor mistakes. You can imagine how this affects their long term performance not to mention their self confidence.
3. People who want to win seek them out – A good example of this is in Sports where players will endure the Coach if their performance improves under their guidance.

Are you a part of the problem?

Jerry Roberts asks the question no-one wants to ask, “Could you be contributing to the stress? Are you just an innocent bystander here, or have you done your share to fan the flames of discontent? Are you meeting stated expectations and do you do everything you can to strengthen the team?”

He adds, ‘When I stopped seeing my boss as good or bad and focused on what I could control — whether they viewed me as an asset or liability — things got a lot simpler.” He outlines five great ways to survive your tough boss here.

Tim Berry reminds us that “occasionally you hear about a coach who is either hard or soft to each individual player, depending on his sense of how that specific player responds. There too, though, with coaching, it’s a pretty complex problem, because it’s about the nature of the coach, the nature of the player, and the nature of the situation.”

Conclusion

Tough bosses have come to us from the Industrial Age where bosses behaved as tyrants and humiliated employees on a whim. In today’s ‘knowledge worker’ economy, employees are looking for direction, for ways to advance their career and move from ‘worker bees’ to creators.

Tough as in committed is admirable; tough as in abusive is… counter-productive.

How do you see bosses moving from a ‘command and control’ philosophy to one that helps their teams contribute to their firm’s success?

Image: noel tanner

The Harvard Business Review asks What the U.S. Can Learn From Europe About Gender Equality in the Workplace, and then Can She Lead? These articles raise the sensitive issue of a) whether women make good bosses, 2) want to be bosses and (slightly controversially), 3) will men support women bosses or do their best to defeat them? One argument is that many men don’t feel comfortable playing second fiddle to a women boss. Yes, I know there are exceptions but… So, while men tend to become CEOs etc due to networks/old boy’s clubs etc, most women, regardless of their ability may not get this opportunity.

Percentage of Women in High Level Positions

The Center for Work-Life Policy announced that while 47% of college-educated entry-level corporate professionals are female, women comprise a mere:

• 21% of senior executives,
• 17% of Congress and
• 15% of board directors

Do Women Make Good Business Leaders?

The Harvard Business Review articles raise three issues:

1. Masculine vs. Feminine women: Ambition in women is often misinterpreted as aggression. Laura Lopez writes about how toughness from a woman can be taken differently than toughness from a man. Similarly, women who allow their "feelings" to get in the way are perceived as too weak to lead and run others. This paradox can leave women unsure about how to best behave and people doubting their intentions as leaders.
2. Belonging vs. Competing: Dr. Roy Baumeister showed that humans have a desire and need to belong, yet women and men differ on how they handle this. He says that women tend to prefer close and intimate relationships, while men tend to go for shallower connections in a larger group of people or a cause. This can lead to men thriving in competitive environments involving networking and competing with their peers, and can result in women avoiding jobs that will place them in direct competition for advancement with their peers to preserve close friendships.
3. Family Life vs. Work Life: In "Opting Out: Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home" Pamela Stone highlights the institutional obstacles and cultural pressures that lead many women to be pushed out of work. This dilemma draws many women away from high-profile careers to stay with the kids at home.

The article concludes by saying that, "Female leaders can rise to the top as they embrace their own strengths as women and maintain a leadership style that is embedded in their individuality. This is what will draw others near, inspire, and motivate. It will also require society to respect women for the strengths they posses?"

Is this true?

Do you see this happening in the workplace? Do you support your female boss as much as your male boss? What are the blind spots and politically correct behavior that stops this from happening?

Most people think it’s difficult start a career as a business consultant. I used to think the same in my early 20s when I started in IT.

In retrospect, I should have made more efforts to establish myself as a consultant earlier; the benefits certainly outweigh the downsides. As luck would have it, I was forced into a consultancy role when I lost my 9-5 job. Time to learn to hustling and bring in business. Harvard Business Review refers to it as The Hustle Strategy. More on that later.

3 Types of Business Consultant

Before we start, there are 3 types of consultants:

1. Academic — those with academic achievements, e.g. PhDs, who are brought in to solve/explore/test problems. Their skills match the problem at hand. So you have it or you don’t.
2. Management — those with senior management skills, such as in M&A, legal, international business development and
3. Solutions — this includes the broad spectrum of 9-workers who’ve ‘repositioned’ their skills, want to work for themselves and/or have others working for them. This, I assume, it where you fit in. It’s where most consultants start out.

How to get started as a Business Consultant

The next question is: how do I get started? Here’s one way of approaching it.

1. Focus — identify your top 3 skills (not technologies). Be honest. If someone put a gun to your head and said “what are the three things you do best?”, then you’d say ”what I do best is…”
2. How do you see yourself — write a pen portrait (100 words max) of how you see yourself. So, if you were introducing yourself person to someone at a conference, you’d say “Hi, this is Amanda she,….” Remember, focus on the benefits you offer, not the tools. Tip – Start to visualize the person/consultant you want to become.
3. Role Models — identify 3 business leaders and use them as role models. For me, Richard Branson is a good example, for you it might be someone else. Read everything about these people, soak up how they made it. It’s not in the words of their bio – but the energy, the drive they had. Having a role model gives you a frame of reference, something to use as a compass/anchor.
4. Meet and Greet — Contact 10 people who are in a similar position as yourself. Meet up, for example, on a Saturday afternoon and see how you can help each other. Remember, you’re looking to link up with people for the long haul. Ignore the tire-kickers. Find 1 or 2 decent people that you trust and keep connecting with them.
5. Be the Glue — Define one common goal with these folks and make it happen. For example, aim to run an event, workshop, training course (whatever) by a specific date. You have to have targets, otherwise nothing will happen. It will just be talking shop.
6. Action Plan — doesn’t need to be fancy. List what needs to be done, assign names, and dates.
7. Examine your USP – I know this sounds lame but you have to differentiate yourself from the competition. This is the key. If you become ‘that guy’ who does, for example, Facebook training, Social Media business communications, Proposal development for biotechnology or whatever, then laser focus on this. Your aim is to dominate this one area. You have to become ‘that guy’.
8. Promotion — once you’ve all your ducks lined up, start getting the message out. Write guest articles in blogs, contribute to events, share information on LinkedIn, send free White Papers to people in your target market – do whatever it takes to promote yourself (and your colleagues) so that you become you become ‘that girl’. Girls, when I say ‘that guy’ I mean both guys and girls. You know that, right?
9. Personal branding – get your site, business cards, sharp suit etc in place. People still judge on appearances. If you look successful…
10. Network — Look for places to get out and meet people. People do business with people they meet. Again, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Find fast ways to meet up and find out where it’s happening. Tip – if you’re a single mom, link up with other parents who want to run their own business and take turns minding each other’s kids:  that way you both get one night a week to get out there and network.
11. Stick to the plan — If you keep this up for 3 months, you’ll change your perception of who you are and also by meeting people, you’ll learn new things. While the web is great, the human touch is what counts.
12. Follow the leader — Tom Peters, Chris Brogan, Richard Branson, ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ have all helped me in different ways.

Chris Brogan made a very interesting observation recently when he said that he tries to be there ‘before the fire starts’. What he meant was that everyone wants to help (i.e. sell you something) when things go wrong but it’s the people you know before it happened that count. I bet there you’ve been in that similar situation yourself. It’s the people you already know that you trust.

One last thing – the harder you try, the luckier you get. Take it one step at a time. Remember the turtle and the hare. Use everyday opportunities as ways to close the gap between where you are and where you want to go.

PS: Started to read this. Impressed so far. Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

What’s your first step?

What advice would you give to those who want to start as a Business Consultant? What’s the one mistake they must avoid? What’s the best tip you ever got on starting your own business?

Thom Haller asks on TCW if ‘to be an effective leader, you need to learn how to write well’.

Do You Need to Write Well to Succeed?

Here’s how I see it.

If you can communicate clearly, then there is a greater chance that people will understand what you want to them.

They ‘may’ trust you more – I don’t know.

I worked in Fortune 500 companies, as I’m sure you folks did, but I didn’t necessarily trust the people or the wisdom of their strategies.

But I know what they expected of me and my team—so we did it.

The failing of most senior managers tend to be:

1. Mixed messages
2. Lack of ownership, and
3. Political correctness.

Some have these forced upon them, (i.e. social pressures) while for others it’s just a habit.

Warren Buffet’s annual reports, which are posted on the Berkshire site, are worth looking at.

Simple, easy to read, no waffle.

UPDATE:

Thom asked if I could give some examples.

The last company I worked for brought in a new CEO as we needed to turn things around fast.

Here’s what he did (among other things):

• Every communication you send has the move the task towards completion. In other words, communications (emails, reports, speeches) are to push the task to the next step/person/activity.
• If what you say/do slows the process or (as was the case with my line mgr) obscures what’s happening the he (as the main firefighter) can see what’s going on.
• Specifically he told us to:
• keep team mtgs to less than 20 min – if you can’t solve it by then, escalate. Most people will find a way to find resolution rather than escalate and look incompetent.
• keep one-2-one mtgs to 5 min – e.g. the pm mon mtg with head of dev. All you want to know is a) is it on track 2) can you fix it 3) when will it be fixed. The pms started to interview the team leads for 5 min. in and out. No messing around.
• Make the tech docs shorter. He wanted thin docs. No fluff. He personally reviewed all tech docs. We had his permission to cut out the waffle.
• Use traffic head lights on all status reports, e.g. red for critical etc.
• Status reports were printed out and put on the wall, i.e. everyone saw if your project was on/off schedule.

• Forbid us to use TLAs. Everything had to be worked correctly. Why? TLAs (to him) were short-hand for laziness. This drove people mad but he pushed it repeatedly.

His emails were a series of action points. E.g.

1. Ivan Walsh – tech docs – fri – status

There was no chitchat.

The combination of all this was that people were more direct, immediate and effective. It was a combined effort but it had a v positive effect on the workplace.

After a few months, it felt like we were communicating better.

Also, he praised people who got it right.

You can read the rest of this discussion on The Content Wrangler

What do you think?

Does your team lead, line manager or CEO really need to know how to write well?

Can you give an example of how you’ve seen this work or fail in your organization?

It’s not often that newspaper cover the roles on women in IT. This week in TechFlash they provide a rundown of the top 100 women CEO’s, Blogger, and IT consultants in the industry. [ad#ad1]