Rachel E Maddux

Ever worked for an unethical leader or closely tied to one?

April 24, 2014 by Rachel E Maddux

This is everyone’s nightmare if it is as horrible as the one I worked for in 2001 in a small hearing aid office privately owned in Washington State. This manager/owner fell into the ethical egoism category, having high self-interest for himself but also the greater good of the company for the most part. Going over the five principles of ethical leadership we take a look at how ethical he was in some ways and unethical in others. Questioning if he is an ethical leader.

(Image Source: http://drbilldonahue.com/ethical-leadership/)

The five principles of ethical leadership help determine who is ethical and who does not fall into this category as a leader.

The first one to discuss is respecting others. The manager/owner I worked for had tremendous respect for others by being understanding empathetic and always listened to someone’s point of view even if he did not agree and at times went with what someone else was saying because after hearing what they had to say, he believed it. That is very refreshing once it happens and helps an individual feel much more comfortable with a person, or at least it did for me.

The second one is serving others. He was the most considerate guy when it came to looking into someone’s hearing loss and ensured that he did not fit you with hearing aids at $4k a pop if your ears just needed a good cleaning. Even though he did not like doing this nor did he get paid for it, he would clean patient’s ears out for no charge, have them come back a week later and take another hearing test to see if they noticed an improvement. He never wanted to charge anyone for something they didn’t need. It was really refreshing to see how he handled working with elderly and I looked up to him.

The third one is shows justice. To his employees he ensured a good level of justice in the office with the employees, ensuring everyone got the same amount of sick time, vacation time, and a special category he called “personal time” with pay. This was quite nice that there was no special treatment especially when it came to raises and bonuses for the end of the year. He had his days where he was really mean and I honestly thought I would quit but I really had no reason to other than his mood swings which after work for him for six years, I began to understand and knew how to dodge and diffuse them. His just fairness went for every aspect of having employees, even offering health insurance to telemarketers, which was unheard of in Washington State because they were only part time employees and he was not required.

The Fourth one is manifests honesty. Everything about his private business deals to his public government ones appeared to be just and honest. I was the office manager so I did all the billing and managed all the sales. Nothing seemed to be out of whack and he had a great handle on his business. He did a lot of in house calls but that was for those who were not able to come into the office due to their age, traveling issues or just not able to move in general and he never wanted that to be the reason that they were not able to hear their loved ones. He acquired the trust of so many clients and everyone that worked for him. People loved him and would call me all the time at the office just to ask how he was doing if they hadn’t seen him in a long time. He was very honest with everyone and no surprises ever arose.

The fifth one is builds community. Everyone that worked for him was a small family, we all got along, understood what the business goal was and worked as hard as we could doing whatever he needed to be the best so he could be successful. Once a week we had a sit down meeting with everyone in the office, telemarketers included and talked about where the business was headed and if we saw anywhere we could improve to make our lives easier or save money. This helped everyone feel like we were one group operating together. I really thought I would work for him forever because of the great place it was to work.

One day I had two gentlemen in suits come to the office and ask to speak to the office manager, which was me. They asked me if I would go to lunch with them and showed me their badges, they were state investigators. Confused and thinking they had made a mistake I went with them not knowing any better. I knew everything about the business, I was sure I could clarify whatever issue they had discovered on accident. They told me the owner, my manager, had committed a little under a half million dollars of fraud on state hearing aid claims. To my amazement I told them no they were wrong and I could show them anything to prove that my manager was innocent. When I returned to the office, my manager was there and stated I was never to talk to those people again and that they want to ruin him. I didn’t know what to do and I asked him questions and he turned into a completely different person than I had known for the past six years. His words were not comforting and he did not seem like his just acts were just any longer.

To make a long story short, he had billed for hearing aids after people had passed away. They were in home calls according to him, so I billed for them. I was so confident in my job, so confident in our family we had going on at the small office, never in a million years did I think anything like that would ever happen. He put on a great front appearing to be the best manager/owner someone could want to work for and in the end, I quit shaking my head. I was disappointed in myself for being fooled for so long but all the signs pointed to an honest, just, understanding guy that was trying to make his business the best.

Finding an ethical leader that fits the mold is unique, not many can fit into every principle exactly. They are human so there will be hiccups at times but for the most part, there are ethical leaders that are able to maintain large aspects of each principle.

References:

Northouse, P. (2013). Ethics and Leadership. Leadership: theory and practice (6th ed., ). Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

The 5 Principles of Ethical Leadership. (2013, January 1). Dr Bill Donahue Conference Speaker Author and Leadership Consultant. Retrieved April 24, 2014, from http://drbilldonahue.com/ethical-leadership/

How often do you see authentic leadership in the workplace or in general?

April 13, 2014 by Rachel E Maddux

The four components of authentic leadership are self-awareness, internalized moral perspective, balanced processing, and relational transparency. Just reading those words, what do they mean? How do they tie into authentic leadership? I thought for sure I knew but I quickly realized there was much more to it. There have been leaders in my career which I feel have authentic leadership for a few reasons which meet some of the criteria for authentic leadership but after reading Northouse’s chapter on authentic leadership I had to go back and really think if what I thought was authentic leadership was.

Knowing who you are, your strengths and weaknesses, and how you impact others is a large task to conquer seems like a very important task in general let alone leadership. Most people do not know right away what their strengths and weaknesses are and it takes some time to think about what they are. Even when you think you have it figured out you may second guess yourself or ask someone else what they think your strengths and weaknesses are just to confirm what you have come up with. Everyone thinks they know themselves and understand themselves but not all do and it is very hard to lead individuals if you do not know.

Without reading policies at your company or doing any research we all know right from wrong. We know what is morally acceptable for the most part and what we should not do. “Internalized moral perspective refers to a self-regulatory process whereby individuals use their internal moral standards and values to guide their behavior rather than allow outside pressures to control them (Northouse, p. 264)”. Doing the right thing whether or not the group thinks it is a good idea is very important for you and for the business. Adding in the policies and procedures a company implies on a leader and following though will come hand in hand if you can do this for yourself in your daily life.

Balanced processing is personally hard for me to do. I am getting better at it in my older years but in my 20s I could not for the life of me wait for someone else to give their opinion and then make my decision. Long before anyone spoke I knew what I thought and that was how it was going to be. With age came the ability to do this, little by little. Understanding someone else’s point of view even if you do not agree and considering their position is important when using balanced processing. This is a key trait that is extremely important in a authentic leader.

Lastly there is relational transparency, which seems to be the biggest problem in the company I work for. Communication is key for everyone when working with groups of people and being able to listen and be honest with your co-workers, subordinates, peers, etc. is important. This seems to be the single largest crutch I have seen in all of my jobs up to this point. It appears that most people do not want to be open and honest, that is not what being successful is all about to them, they want to hide certain things and use them as weapons when needed. This to me seems odd, we are all working for the same company and I don’t quite understand this technique. Now with reading Northouse I understand it is not a technique, it is a crutch because some aspect of leadership is lacking. The key part, in my opinion is “the individuals showing both positive and negative aspects of themselves to others (Northouse, p. 264)”.

Authentic leadership is a behavior that can be seen with people that are not leaders as well. It is not required to be a leader to hold these traits, I am sure you have worked with someone in some way that would fall into this category but they are not leaders and maybe they never want to be. The individuals I can think of with the traits that fall into this are not 100% matched although they are much closer than others. It is interesting how someone can naturally have the majority of what it takes to be a natural leader but when they come into the role, it falls apart. I personally think some people are really good at it but getting pulled in many different directions makes it difficult to maintain. Being a leader where I currently work is a struggle from day to day; relational transparency is not great with most leaders above and below them as well as self-awareness. Proper training to help leaders bring this out and use it would be helpful but how many of them could maintain it? I would imagine not many.

Reference: Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Skills Approach Applied to Management

March 30, 2014 by Rachel E Maddux

Last week I was working with all levels of management in my organization at a large production company and thought about the skills approach for each of the leaders and if they had fallen into where they should for their level. Where I work there are 190 supervisory management, 80 middle management and 2 top management in my organization. Technically there is a Vice President above my director and the roles above him to get to the top. When dealing with all of these individuals there are many different personalities and opinions that are associated to them and how they feel things should be done. Taking into account the Management Skills Necessary at Various Levels of an Organization (Figure 1) helped me understand where they stood and if they were on par with their position or slightly off.

Figure 1

The top manager in my organization is the director and his cohort, one level below him but essentially the same job. They are both very technical as Northouse puts it, “technical skill is knowledge about and proficiency in a specific type of work or activity (p. 44)”. This is because they started on the shop floor in their younger years turning a wrench with the mechanical technicians and quality technicians. There have been no changes to the build plan for the most part so when it comes to details about the small things that they should not be involved in they get stuck in the weeds so to speak because they know it all too well. For the most part they are good with their human skill, which is defined as “knowledge about and ability work with people (Northouse, p. 44)”. The human skill at times gets tricky for them though as there are close to 3500 teammates on the floor, makes it difficult to discuss and listen to every one of them. That is where I come in play and am a sounding board to flow improvement ideas up to leadership. Even though I am the gateway to get to talk to the top management it does not always work out that way and people get discouraged. As for the conceptual skill, “the ability to work with ideas and concepts (Northouse, p. 46)”, they are very good at that piece as well. According to the Skills needed in figure 1, the top management should be less technical and bump up their human skill to fall into the three skill level approach.

Middle management is all over the place with the three skill level approach where I work. A handful of them are good at technical, human and conceptual but most of them are not. It is hard to determine which is good at what so for the purpose of figuring it out, I would imagine an excel spreadsheet with all their names and their abilities checked on a scale of 1 to 10 would help determine who was best at what. Some of the middle management did not come from the company within; they were hired from outside the company. For the most part individuals will be successful even if they are hired from outside the company but during the time most of these folks were hired we were in high concentration mode to finish our first product so training and time to learn the job were not options. They were thrown into the mix and expected to be successful in all aspects. This is evident when observing where they fit in the skills approach. Most either lack the technical or human skill required to fall into the middle management bracket of figure 1. For those who lack the human skill, it is hard to determine whether or not they can be taught that skill. I do not think they are hopeless but I do think pulling them out of a high human interaction role until it gets finessed would be a good idea.

Supervisory management is high in technical and human but low in conceptual. This makes sense because they should be focused on the technical aspects of the business, are they meeting their demand, is their team doing what they are supposed to do and are they performing as they stated they would that morning. The human aspect is also important; this is the first manager a teammate talks to if they have a technical issue or teammate issue. Having the people skill is most important in this role, I believe. The conceptual piece of the skills matrix is beginning to develop in this role but is not strong yet. The managers should be paying most attention to the technical and human aspects and working on the conceptual when they have free time. There are more supervisory management where I work that are very good with technical and human and low on conceptual which is where they need to be but there are always a few that struggle with the human aspect and have coaches to help them with it.

Overall the skills approach is interesting to plug into a place of employment, just to see where people fit. After thinking about it, our business is nowhere near exact with it and we have work to do. Of course no company is flawless with their management so it is expected for some to not line up with figure 1. I wonder if there are any companies out there that do fall into the skills approach exactly and how successful they are. I imagine pretty successful especially if they all have the human aspect down.

Reference:

Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

How a group becomes a team…

March 24, 2014 by Rachel E Maddux

Have you ever been thrown into a group of people at work or school and told to be successful with an item or a task that will produce a result? This has been my life for the past seven years at my job and for the past two years with school. It is interesting how a group of people that are all working toward the same goal can come together, discuss their difference of opinions and move toward a team setting to perform the required task and deliver the end result successfully. At school we all know we are on the same topic, have the same goal, and want to get a good grade. Our goals are all the same basically but we will rely on each other to be successful when it comes to group projects. At work the goal is always the end result of why we were put into a group to form a team and we all have a very different idea of how to get to the end result. The most recent group that I was put into to turn into a team and work on a common goal was for putting together and implementing a 5S (Sort, Simplify, Sweep, Standardize, Sustain) plan for the production floor at work. The way to get to this end result is putting our heads together and figuring out what the solution is and the best way to approach it. For this project, we went through Bruce Tuckman’s Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing team development model without even knowing it. First we had to form in a room face – to – face and get a grip on who was on the team and what they brought to the group as far as area expertise was concerned. Next we had to figure out a plan of action to get the end result in a timely fashion while meeting the goal, this stage was storming. The storming stage takes a while, going through everyone’s ideas and getting everyone on the same page can be very tough at times with strong personalities in the room. By the end of the storming stage it feels as though we are more of a team than a group. We have come to a common understanding of how to be successful and have assigned roles and responsibilities to team members which transitions into the norming stage. The whole team knows what we are all doing in the room together and why we were chosen for the project which really helps build the relationships. Once roles are agreed upon and understood we then transition into the performing role which is the role that takes us to implementation of a successful plan by the team. With teams there are leaders and someone always take the role of the leader whether they meant to or not. Usually there is a strong personality in the room that takes over and becomes the leader, sometimes that is me but we all get opportunities to lead so many projects it does not bother anyone when someone volunteers or takes it over on their own.

Work Cited:

Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.

Wilson, C. (2010). Bruce Tuckman’s forming, storming, norming & performing team development model . Retrieved from http://www.performancecoachtraining.com/resources/docs/pdfs2/BruceTuckman_Team_Development_Model.pdf

The Leadership Grid

February 16, 2014 by Rachel E Maddux

Working in a production environment but not in production itself allows me to observe from afar, noting how leaders perform and how teammates accept their leaders guidance. Currently my role is keeping the peace basically, making sure everyone feels as though they are heard and understood. Ensuring communication between first, second, third line managers, directors and teammates is also key to a successful production environment with content teammates. An ideal manager in a production environment who can work with people well and keep results high is either middle-of-the-road management (5,5) or Team Management (9,9). The rest of the major leadership styles, I have seen first hand, prove to be unsuccessful in making teammates happy and preforming successfully in production.

The management styles from Blake and Mouton’s Managerial (Leadership) Grid are Authority-Compliance (9,1), Country-Club Management (1,9), Impoverish Management (1,1), Middle-of-the-Road Management (5,5) and Team Management (9,9) (Northouse, 2013). Managers that fall under the style of impoverish management (1,1) are not very concerned for their teammates or the job itself, this is obvious with the happiness of the group and what they produce. The manager is constantly questioned by upper management on performance and why it is so terrible until they decide to the manager out of that role. Country-Club Management (1,9) is a style I see often where I work, these managers are loved by their people and most everyone on the production floor wants to work for them but upper management is not seeing results. This creates a problem that is often confusing for upper management, if their people love their style so much it seems as though it would be easy to coach the teammates to do the job properly. The lack of interest in the job is the problem, not the individuals working for the manager. Authority-Compliance management (9, 1) is all about getting the job done, not very personable or helpful when it comes to issues outside of the job itself with teammates, people do not enjoy working for this manager but they are doing their job and upper management sees results. This style of management can be very dangerous for a happy production enviornment. Those three management styles are the least ideal ones to adopt where I work. Currently we have a struggle with communication to the teammates and managers pushing hard for productivity, which creates a problem, unhappy teammates.

The ideal first line manager style should be team management (9,9) on the leadership grid with a strong connection to the teammates they manage and clear and concise understanding of the production environment they are managing. I would consider the style team management to be what is wanted out of every manager, this will ensure success all around but that is not the case. It has become a hope to get a manager that falls into the style of middle-of-the-road management (5,5), who keeps performance on track and the teammates happy, working well together and producing a quality product. There is also room for growth with a middle-of-the-road manager, they can be coached to become a team manager much easier than the management styles of authority-compliance, country-club, and impoverish management.

There is room to grow for all styles of management that fall on Blake and Mouton’s grid, the managers that fall closest to middle-of-the-road management and team management are the most successful and ideal to have running the production floor teams that I have seen. All managers have room for improvement but ideally production would be smooth running and people would be happy with managers that cared about individuals, as teammates and ensuring the jobs they are working on are successful.

Reference:

Blake , R., & Jane , M. (n.d.). Managerial grid. Retrieved from http://managementstudyguide.com/blake-mouton-managerial-grid.htm

Northouse, P.G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.