Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Ever Had a Team Slow Walk a Job?

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“Why can’t I just tell the team what they are supposed to do?” complained Aaron. “Why do I have to bring them into the meeting? I can figure out what we need to do much faster.”

“What happens if they disagree with your solution?” I ask.

“Well, that’s just tough. I’m the boss and I am supposed to be smarter than they are.”

“Aaron, have you ever had a team slow walk a job on you? Or worse, sandbag a job on you?” Aaron stopped. A blank stare came across his face. I could see this had happened more than once. He was just trying to decide which one he was going to tell me about.

I continued, “Aaron. You may be a smart guy. You might even have the right answer to solve the problem, but you need the cooperation of your team to execute that solution. The time for your team to have questions is before they get into the thick of things. Once things get rolling, if you have to stop to explain your thinking, it’s too late.

“So, let’s set up a meeting beforehand. Let them ask questions, let them challenge the solution. Let them grapple with the problem a bit and then agree on a course of action. Once everyone is in agreement, then we can roll forward, full steam ahead.” -TF

Deeper Questions

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“Tell me about someone in your life who had a significant impact,” I queried. Lydia paused, a smile crept across her face. Without speaking a word, you could see a warm emotional connection with the person she was thinking about.

Lydia and I had been talking about communication skills, specifically listening at a deeper level. Deeper questions move the conversation to new level.

“I am not sure I am comfortable asking those questions,” she explained.

“If you want to have significant conversations, you have to ask significant questions. In the beginning you may not feel comfortable, but with more practice, you will find that people actually like to talk about things that are significant to them. It happens to be their favorite subject.”

Lydia was thinking about that significant person. As she began to speak, I could see this conversation would be interesting, inspiring and thoughtful. Lydia had been waiting a lifetime to have this conversation with someone and she was just getting started. -TF

Deeper Listening Skills

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“What do mean, I wasn’t listening. I heard what he said,” protested Lydia. We were discussing different levels of listening.

“I know you heard what he said, but I want you to listen deeper.” I challenged.

“What do you mean?”

“Most of the time, when we are listening, we make eye contact, we exhibit great body language to show we are engaged, but in truth, we are just waiting for them to take a breath so we can – respond. Listening to respond shows you are paying attention, but I want you to listen deeper.

“I want you to think about understanding. Listen for understanding.” I stopped. Lydia was thinking. I waited. She nodded.

“Lydia, listening for understanding will help you gain insight to the other person’s point of view, to understand their position.” I stopped again.

“But I want you to listen even deeper. Once you understand the other person’s point of view, understand where the other person is headed (in life), you have to look at where you are headed. Between where the other person is headed and where you are headed, there is some common ground. You have to find that intersection. The deepest level of listening is listening to learn.” -TF

You Need to Know

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“It felt a little strange. I am not normally a nosy person,” reported Nicholas. We had been working on the most basic communication skill, talking to one person.

“It’s not being nosy. It’s being a supervisor,” I replied. “Nicholas, you supervise four field technicians. On any given day, what is the biggest issue you have to deal with?”

“I don’t know. A difficult project?”

“No, that is the easy part of supervision. You love to help with difficult projects. The most difficult part of being a supervisor, often, is knowing whether your technicians are going to show up for work, whether they show up on time so you can get the crew started, and what kind of personal baggage they bring to the workplace that is going to influence their attitude.”

“You’re right, especially on Monday.” Nicholas lamented.

“As a supervisor, can you afford to be surprised? If you have a crew of four and two don’t show up for work, you just lost 50 percent of your workforce for the day. If you are the supervisor, you need to know your people well enough to anticipate. At the same time, you need to know what gets your guys jazzed up about things. What motivates them? What interests do they have? What does get them to work on time? What is important in their lives?

“As a supervisor, it is your job to get to know your people, their work habits, their reliability, things going on that will impact their performance on the job. It’s not being nosy. It’s being a supervisor.” -TF

I Can’t Just Come to Work Anymore

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“The biggest change for me,” said Renee, “is that I have to spend time learning. I thought I was finished learning when I finished school. I was wrong. Think about it. The things I am learning today weren’t even invented when I was in school.”

Renee paused and looked around the table. “First, I have to keep an open mind that there are things I don’t know. There are things we do that can be done better. There are new ways to reach our customers. There are new ways for our customers to reach us.

“There are new products in our market that are better than our products. We have to see where we need improvement. We have to keep an open mind that we can always get better.

“The main thing is, I just can’t keep coming to work every day, thinking, all there is to do, is the work. If I want to be more effective, I have to keep learning.” -TF

P.S. Management Skills Blog celebrates its one year anniversery today. Cheers. -TF

The Most Important Question

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“So, what’s changed?” I ask. It is one of my favorite questions. Change can happen on the outside, but it can also happen on the inside.

I always ask, “What’s changed in your industry?” The responses are easy, mostly observations from trade journals.

“What’s changed in your company?” The eyes roll. There is always some new something. Some new computer software, some new procedure, some new person, something new to stir things up. You can hear all about it at the water cooler.

“And with your team? What’s changed about your team?” The looks are puzzled. Well, we have a new team member. And Ralph, is getting weirder. And we have to work harder than we used to. And more is expected of us.

“And with yourself? What has changed about you?” This is the most interesting question. In the past twelve months, what has changed about you? What is the most significant thing you have learned? What is the most important decision you have made? What has made your older and wiser? What have you lived through that has prepared you for tomorrow? -TF

Build a Real Team

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It was Lori’s turn to talk, “After the hurricane, in the midst of all this, without power, downed traffic lights, dodging piles of debris on the side of the road, our team members showed up. We had no air conditioning. They had to share computers running off of generators. Our land line phone service was down and only three cell phones could receive a usable signal. The warehouse guys had to manually keep track of things on a clipboard, and be neat about it. They really came together as a team.”

People often ask me for ways to go about building teamwork. They suggest things like ropes courses, sensitivity training, personality and communication seminars. I always respond the same way.

If you want to build a team, gather the group together and give them a real problem to solve. Give them a problem that is difficult, where the outcome makes a genuine difference. Give them a problem where the challenges require them to cooperate and support each other’s efforts. Solving real problems builds real teams. -TF

New Lessons on Preparedness

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Hurricane Wilma disappeared from national media attention a couple of weeks ago, yet South Florida is still deep in the digging out phase. Power has yet to be restored to more than 100,000 businesses and residences. Fifteen days after the storm, watching the face of someone just receiving power is very uplifting.

Post hurricane debriefings are a staple of company life these past few days with some significant learnings. There is a distinct phase of preparedness that is emerging, seldom considered before.

Most companies in South Florida had some sort of pre-hurricane preparedness plan. It included storm preparations to safeguard lives and property. It is a testament to that preparedness that only ten people died during the storm.

Emerging is a new phase of preparedness where most companies were caught short. Post storm recovery had been limited to taking down shutters and piling up a little debris. Hurricane Wilma taught us the lesson of extended loss of power and staple provisions well beyond a three day period.

Here is a question or two? What was the biggest lesson your company learned? Based on that lesson, what would you recommend in the future? Please post your responses here. -TF

Organizing Your Thoughts

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More from the Ask Tom mailbag.

Question

Everyday I get more and more information through reading and talking to people, observation etc. My question is, “How do I organize the information I have identified as useful?”

I currently use an Excel file and filters in the worksheets to do it but is there a better way?

Response

Any tools that help you will work, whether they are spreadsheet tools, database tools, or even searchable documents.

First consideration is to determine if the tool is accessible or part of your daily discipline to record the things you want to remember or have access to later.

Second consideration is the ability to quickly search to find what you are looking for. Even my blog works well for this. It is a series of thoughts, set in categories. I can search a specific category if I am looking for something. Even more powerful is the actual search tool built into the blog that lets me search for a key word or phrase.

Finally, you will find that you use different tools for different things. I keep lists in my Palm Pilot for books I want to buy. That way, when I get to the bookstore, my list is always with me. For ideas that I might want to organize into workshops, I find that PowerPoint is very helpful. For very complex ideas, I actually create websites to help me understand the dependencies and linking between ideas and processes. It helps me understand the logic of ideas and what impact one idea may have on another idea.

One tool that we have found very helpful is a tool called a wiki. You can see how it has been used as a collaborative tool by visiting the following link:

www.wikipedia.org. This actually allows other people to help piece ideas together. -TF

If you would like to ask Tom a question, follow the link to the right.

A Sequence of Many Skills

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From the Mailbag at Ask Tom

Question

What are some delegation skills?

Response

Delegation is really a sequence of skills. The sequence starts with identifying the person for the delegation. As delegation is your most powerful people development tool, the selection process requires both coaching and mentoring skills.

Successful delegations involve skills in both planning and goal setting. Communication skills are important during the delegation meeting, to make sure that expectations are clearly understood. Follow-up and evaluation skills are important as the delegation progresses, to determine course adjustments toward the final delivery in the delegation.

So you see, delegation is not a single skill, but a sequence of separate skills put together for a specific purpose. -TF

If you would like to ask Tom a question, follow the link to the right that says -Ask Tom-.