Last week on an upgraded flight between Denver and Orlando, I was given a warm cookie after the meal service. This is a nice touch United Airlines does and has done for first class passengers for years.

But as I examined the little brown paper sack the cookie came in, I was amused by the sentence imprinted on the bag: Made fresh, especially for you.

Something about that woke up the stand-up comic that resides deep within me as I began to imagine how Jerry Seinfeld might relate this story on stage.

“I’m sure the flight attendant saw me board and immediately called to the gate attendant, ‘Better bring me down a cup of sugar, a cup of flour, and a few eggs.  I gotta do something really special for the guy in 4B!”

Unless there was a full kitchen installed in the galley of this particular Boeing 757, I highly doubt the cookie was made fresh.  And unless the 23 other first class passengers on the flight weren’t also offered one, that cookie wasn’t especially for me.

It’s just advertising hyperbole, right?  C’mon, Chester! No one takes that stuff seriously.

However, when you consider that what’s imprinted on this sack is only one of many messages that United tries to convey to its customers, one has to wonder which are to be believed and which aren’t.  Some, like the one on the cookie sack, are to be taken with a grain of salt.  Conversely, those printed on the safety instruction card inserted into the seat back in front of each passenger are to be taken very seriously.

Between those two extremes are hundreds of other messages that United, and every other business, needs to communicate to both its external–and its internal–customers.

Where Do You Draw the Line?

United’s cookie sack message wasn’t intended as slapstick comedy. Instead, the brain trusts in their marketing department thought this imprint would resonate with their passengers reassuring them that the airline pulls out all stops to make their special customers feel special. (As a two-million mile flyer on United, I can say with certainty that this is far from reality.)

This begs the question, how do employees process the marketing messages their company communicates to the general public?

A few years ago, one of my clients (a large quick-service restaurant chain) asked me to help them upgrade the work ethic across their front lines.  They wanted strategies to improve loyalty, honesty, reliability, and service from their hourly associates.  In a conference call with C-level leaders, I heard them reference Chick-fil-A several times as the standard they were aiming for.

Chick-Fil-A is an organization heavily rooted in shared values and, as a result, their customer service is legendary.  Far from stodgy, however, their hysterical use of jersey cows pleading with you to “Eat Mor Chikin!” is the centerpiece of their highly effective advertising campaign.

Conversely, the brand I was working with uses scantily-clad women in provocative poses to gain the attention of their targeted consumer (18-35 yr. old men).

The messaging between these two highly visible brands is as far apart as the service you typically receive at each.

Transparency Happens and Congruity Rules

Whatever you may choose to believe about millennials, there is one value they all hold sacred: congruity.

They’re very accepting of you and/or your brand as long as you don’t try to wear two faces.  You’d better be congruent, because in this age of social media, you are transparent in all forms of communication whether or not that is your intent.

That means you cannot represent your brand one way to your customers and a different way to your employees.  Want to be seen as hip, cool, and trendy?  Employees are going to want to dress, act, and perform accordingly.  Want to be esteemed by the public as having traditional old-school values? Better rethink company happy hours and casual Fridays.

Your internal messages are going to be shared externally and your external messaging is going to be applied internally.

It this gives you an uneasy feeling, it’s time to circle the wagons and get your marketing department and HR department on the same page.

Work – Life Balance.

As a baby boomer teen born to depression-era parents, I never heard that term once.  Didn’t exist back then and, if it had, it would have never come out of my father’s mouth.  Hard work was his life, and when he had a day off, he worked.  To my dad and those who were his age and older, balance was something you did to your checkbook when the statement arrived.

It wasn’t until the late eighties when this three-word term entered the American lexicon, and it wasn’t popularized until the late nineties. Now those three words are said in conjunction as frequently as pass the salt.

When was the last time you made it through a day without hearing a coworker, friend, or associate talk about achieving work-life balance? It’s almost as if this had become the ultimate destination where everyone wants to go; a Shangri-La where life and work co-exist in perfect harmony; the intersection of meaningful contribution, passion, relaxation, and prosperity.

Who doesn’t want to go there, even if only for a weekend visit?

Trouble is, true work-life balance is a myth. I’ve never met the individual who says they work just the right amount of time (and no more) and that their work provides them everything they need and want,  making their life balance perfectly.

We know what work is.  It’s the ‘life’ part of the equation that interrupts the balance.

Life is an all-inclusive term that encompasses our health and fitness, our social relationships, our family time, our personal interests and recreational pursuits, our spiritual growth, etc.

Now what King or Queen lives a fairy tale existence where all of those things by themselves are in balance–not-to-mention, in balance with work?

I confess that my life is rarely ‘in balance’.  And I carry around a lot of guilt and angst about that.

This weekend, a good friend sent me this video of a brilliant Ted talk.  It’s changed my perspective.

Click here to access this video.

I’m certainly not going to stop working hard, nor will I abandon my desire to seek balance with the various aspects of my life.  But what I’ve discovered from Dan Thurmon’s inspiring 18-minute presentation is that it’s okay–make that perfectly natural and normal–to be out of balance, as long as I do so on purpose.

So beginning today, I’m going to let go of my pursuit of work-life balance and focus on staying on purpose.

Heck, I’m even going to finally learn to juggle; something I’ve always wanted to do but never have purposely created the space to pursue.

When you fly, do you actually pay attention to the airline safety announcement?

Neither do I.

These FFA mandated announcements are, for the most part, monotonous, mundane, and insulting to the intelligence of anyone with a fifth grade education.  Instructing passengers on how to fasten their seat belt by inserting the end with the clip into the metal buckle?  PALEEZE!

However, this past week I experienced one that made me drop my USA Today Sports section, as it captured my undivided attention for nearly 5 minutes.

Delta Airlines now uses a highly entertaining video to inform passengers of the strict safety rules that is oddly reminiscent of the 1980 blockbuster comedy, Airplane!  (And man, I loved that movie.)

(Click here if you can’t access this video.)

Unquestionably, our attention spans are rapidly decreasing and the competition for capturing attention and holding it captive for any duration of time is increased exponentially.  So if communicating important messages, rules, policies, procedures, etc. to others is a part of how you earn your daily bread, it’s essential to apply these 3 key principles:

1. Shock and Awe. Adrift in a sea of distracted multitasking Zombies, you have to be radically different to get noticed.  So take bold steps to be hysterically funny, be shockingly controversial, or be heavily dramatic in your efforts to break preoccupation right out of the starting gate. Winning a few nanoseconds of attention is half the battle.

2. Don’t dillydally. My son is an experienced copywriter for a trendy advertising agency in San Francisco.  His job is to tell a compelling story that includes an attention-getting beginning, an engaging middle, and a persuasive conclusion, all within a 15-second time frame (the length of most of the commercials you now see on TV.) Zac has become an expert at cutting words from sentences to remove any that aren’t absolutely necessary. It’s not what he writes that counts, its how much he can say in short, compact sentences that matters.  Translation? Make your point STAT.

3. Throw a change up.  At any given time, GEICO has at least three completely different ad campaigns running simultaneously. You may love the dueling banjo spots, like the cavemen, and hate the lizard, but the continual variety GEICO employs increases the chances that you will remember that ‘a 15-minute call could save you 15% or more on your insurance.’  Whatever technique you choose to deliver your important messages, don’t allow them to become predictable.

The task of communicating important messages to a mass audience now requires far more than a memo, an email, a talking head, and even a professionally produced video.  Breaking through the clutter and captivating the attention of those you’re attempting to train, inform, and/or even protect now calls for out-of-the-box thinking and guerrilla tactics.

Now, if the attention you’re trying to win is owned by someone who is 25 or under, you better pull out the heavy artillery and prepare for an epic battle. These 3 principles are just a jumping off point.

A customer service manager of a regional banking chain recently told me about a challenge her managers were having in getting young tellers to handle incoming calls when they were assigned phone duty.

“It’s astounding how many will answer our business line by just saying ‘Hello’ or ‘Yo. Wat up? This is Monique.’ It’s almost as if they’ve never answered a phone call for anyone else,” she said.

“It’s likely they haven’t.“ I replied.

Although we got a chuckle out of it, I think it was a moment of Zen for both of us.

Growing up in a family of seven, there was only one phone in the house for all of us to share, and even that was a party line we had to share with our next door neighbor, Mrs. Baker.

My parents had very strict guidelines and ground rules for using the device. The phone was a privilege, not a right, and that privilege could be revoked at a moment’s notice.

Mom and dad taught my four sisters and me that when the phone rang, we were to answer it by politely and clearly enunciating our names, as in, “Hello/Good morning! This is the Chester residence, Eric speaking.”

We were told not answer it on the first ring (appearing overly anxious) and never during our family dinner hour.  Further, we were not allowed to run to a ringing phone (so as not to be gasping for breath) and we were never to tell a caller that a person wasn’t home or that they were in the shower, etc.; only that the person the caller was trying to reach was ‘currently unavailable to come to the phone’ and that we ‘would be happy to take a message and make sure the person would receive it.’ (How’s that for accountability?)

Oh, and before we got to a ringing phone, we were instructed to have a pencil or pen in hand in the event we needed to take a message that included the caller’s name, number, a convenient time they could be reached, and any other important details.

The reason I can remember this so vividly 40+ years later is that it wasn’t something that was just casually mentioned once when I was a kid.  This procedure was drilled into me and my sisters on a daily basis by parents who wanted us to learn proper phone etiquette as a life skill.  We had to get it right every single time or face the consequences.

Today, if you call me or any of my four sisters, the phone will be answered as if it were 1969. And good manners never go out of style.

Contrastingly, there is a rapidly increasing percentage of today’s workforce that have never lived in homes that have a land line, and many of these people have never (or rarely) answered a call that was intended for someone other than themselves. It’s foolish to assume that these individuals arrive to the job prepared to answer a business phone with any degree of protocol or professionalism.

That means you can no longer simply assign phone duty to someone and expect that it’s going to be handled appropriately unless you’re 100% confident that that individual clearly understands the weight of that responsibility, and they have been taught how each caller is to be treated.

In other words, assume nothing.

This conversation extends well beyond answering the phone.  It requires a complete paradigm shift in the way that mature leaders interact with their young workers.

Technology has accelerated the pace of change, and those changes transcend the electronics we use each day.  It has impacted the way disparate demographic segments think, act, communicate, and see the world.

TAKE ACTION – Before giving instruction to a person who doesn’t share your historical perspective (i.e. they are ten or more years your junior), take time to spell out your expectations and the rationale behind them.  Then provide instructions for achieving that objective that are so clear (step-by-step, if necessary) that the listener could repeat them verbatim to another person a week later.

Remember, millennials aren’t stupid.

They just weren’t present when your parents were teaching you manners and etiquette.

If you woke up today and discovered that you had won millions in last evening’s lottery drawing, would you still work?

Always a great conversation starter, the number of Americans responding ‘yes’ has declined from over 80% in 1955 to 66% in recent years according to Psychology Today.

So what happens when there are people on your payroll who are in a similar financial situation? Those that have all the money they need and are not motivated by a paycheck. Can they be managed to consistently perform up to their potential?

Consider the children of rich celebrities, or those from wealthy families dubbed ‘trust fund babies’. Ever wonder why they are still working?

A growing number of the conventions I keynote are being held at large casino hotels that are situated on Native American reservations, but I seldom see Native Americans working in those resorts. The most obvious reason for this is that, in most cases, the residents on the reservations are legally entitled to a share of the gaming revenues generated on their native land. Thus, the financial incentive for them to bus tables, clean the rooms, check guests in at the counter, etc. does not exist.

It’s the same scenario in ‘gold rush’ areas where a sudden boom to the economy wreaks havoc with the natural order of the employment landscape.  I’ve gotten S.O.S. calls from the Alberta, Canada cities of Edmonton and Calgary when the insanely rich oil sands projects in Ft. McMurray pulled the rug out from underneath their labor base. This has also been the case in western North Dakota where the fracking boom has created a tremendous labor shortage.

But rarely have I seen a situation quite like that in Doha, Qatar. I was there last week to present at the 2013 Global Innovators Conference where I heard (and witnessed) accounts of zero motivation on behalf of college students and workers who demonstrate little or no need for a paycheck or for a academic grade/diploma.

A previously poor country, Qatar is now a major producer of oil and natural gas. In 2010, Qatar had the world’s highest GDP per capita, while the economy grew by 19%, the fastest in the world. With few exceptions, Qataris (natives) are now financially set. Those that do need/want to work jockey for government jobs, where last year, these already good paying jobs had an across-the-board salary increase of between 65% and 120%.

Before my keynote address, I grabbed my iPhone, stepped outside the convention center, and recorded this video:

There is not an easy answer for motivating employees when their financial needs are not a concern.  But here is what I know for sure:

Money is now, and will continue to be, a fundamental reason for working. While many surveys suggest it is not the primary motivator for most workers, few of us would continue to do what we are doing if we stopped being compensated for our efforts.  (As a former teacher, I can attest that, for a student, a grade is usually a primary motivator.)

However, to fully invest one’s self in any laborious pursuit for any duration of time, it takes more than money (or a grade). The pursuit must have some intrinsic meaning to the worker or student.

That puts the onus on the leader of the workplace – or the classroom – to make certain the employee/student is connected to their efforts in a meaningful way.

In short, they must see the bigger picture and the importance and relevance of their hard work.

If they don’t clearly see that picture, you’ll never be able to pay them enough to give their very best.

It doesn’t take a mechanical engineer to understand why a stool needs at least three legs to fully support and balance even the slightest weight. When trying to support and balance the challenging workplace relationship between your business and your young hires, consider the advantages of inviting their parents into the employment picture as the third leg of your stool. And don’t be fooled into thinking that I’m limiting this strategy to only the moms and dads of teenage workers.

Millennials are getting married later, having children later, and increasingly living with their parents well into their 20s. Gone is the notion that adulthood officially started at 18, when one typically graduated from high school – or even 21, the modern-day age limit for drinking alcohol. A recent University of Chicago survey found that most Americans now believe that adulthood begins at age 26.

Over the past decade, the years from 18 to 25 have evolved into a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which many young people stall for a few extra years in an effort to contemplate the next phase of life, or prepare for it. It’s not at all uncommon for a college grad to accept a nice-paying, full-time job with a company (a career position, so to speak) and then move back home with mom and dad for an undetermined period of time.

If you find this unsettling and want to assign blame, you may be tempted to heap it all on the shoulders of your young cohort. Scores of them are coming out of college saddled with gargantuan student loans and feel the need to rely on someone else to take care of their basic needs while they struggle to get out of debt. Others just want to free up the cash it takes to support the entertainment-rich, techno gadget-filled, bling-bling lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to.

But don’t put it all on the kid.

Much of the reason for the delayed emancipation of our nation’s youth can be attributed to the rise of the helicopter parents; parents who hover over their adult children’s lives and refuse to let go. Some of these chopper-pilot moms and dads are obviously afraid of the old-age feeling of being empty nesters while others are simply trying to compensate for the lack of quality time spent with their children during their adolescence.

Knowing this, it might be a good strategy for you to integrate parents as a supporting leg in your employment equation. Here’s how:

1. Meet the Fockers. Be proactive and extend the welcome mat to the parents. Perhaps even invite them to new employee orientation. Let them meet you on your turf when you’re relaxed and prepared to tour them around and see your best side. Explain why you hired their son/daughter and what you ask from your young staffers. Tell them how you go about developing young talent and grow them with the attitudes, skills, and values that will prepare them for success in your organization and with any others.

2. Pick up the phone within the first two weeks. Don’t wait for something to go wrong before you re-establish contact. Rather, make your first call home one to praise their kid. “Geez, Ms. Baker, Devon is sure a quick study! He’s learning the ropes much faster than most. I’m elated he’s on our team.” This will pay huge dividends should you ever need their support, and you likely will.

3. Share the love. If you offer employee discounts or other non-compensatory perks, extend some of those to parents. Any costs associated with doing this will be more than offset by your savings in employee turnover whenever she approaches mom or dad for help in updating/circulating her resume.

4. Don’t tattle. Regardless of how good your relationship with the parents is, never run to them with a problem without the consent of your employee. Although doing so might more easily resolve a short-term issue, it will shatter the trust between you and your young hire, and it will ultimately tarnish you in the eyes of the parent. Wait until the parent approaches you or until your new hire tells you they need to consult their parents for advice on an issue before suggesting that all of you converge for a pow-wow.

The Bottom Line? If your business employs teens and/or young adults, then this practice is an absolute no-brainer and you’re at a disadvantage if you’re not involving the parents. With the research pointing to so many mid-to-upper twenty-somethings still living at home and relying on mom and dad for advice and support, it makes sense to consider strengthening your employment stool by adding parents as the third leg.

What makes anyone—regardless of their position or work—memorable and extraordinary? We are most impressed not just by the quality of a person’s work but also by the way he or she treats us.

Relationships are key.

If you want your business to become extraordinary, you must develop extraordinary relationships.

Take for instance my mailman, Fred Shea, who I’ve profiled in my books The Fred Factor and Fred 2.0. Fred stood out from other postal carriers who had served our neighborhood for many reasons, but the primary one was his sincere interest in getting to know me.

Think about it, how can you serve customers well if you don’t know or understand them?

Fred’s influence came from his ability to relate to others and build genuine relationships with those on his route—including me.

What makes people like Fred the Postman so good with people is this simple thing: he treats people like friends. He doesn’t wait to become friends with someone. He assumes the positive, expects the best, and values the other person. And guess what? The people he interacts with feel valued.

You may be convinced that relationships are essential to the health of your business or organization, but you aren’t sure how to strengthen the ones you have and build new ones.

These 6 steps will give you a place to start:

1. It isn’t enough to build relationships if you don’t maintain them.

The only thing worse than not creating a good relationship at all is creating a connection with customers that they can’t rely on. When a service provider seems interested initially but doesn’t maintain the relationship after the sale, the customer feels manipulated. It’s almost like a bait and switch.

If you are in sales, you know the importance of keeping the connections you create, even if the prospect didn’t buy from you. Not only is it good business to follow up and say thank you after you make the sale, it can also be good business to follow up with those who didn’t buy to say, “Thanks for considering our products, and please let me know if I can ever help you in the future.”

2. It doesn’t have to take much time.

Sometimes going above and beyond requires a significant investment of time and effort. But in general, those who relate well to others don’t spend extra hours each day relating. It isn’t about how much time you spend with those in a professional setting (although that is important) but how quickly and authentically you are able to demonstrate your concern and commitment. Being fully present when engaging with others is effective and doesn’t have to take much extra time. It simply involves putting aside any distractions and giving the person you are with your undivided attention.

3. Friendliness is a choice, not a response.

It’s easy to be friendly to nice people, but how do you deal with angry customers? If you depend on the mood of the other person, you’ll be limited in who you can connect with. The test of friendliness is the ability to be pleasant to someone who is being unpleasant to you. Instead of fighting fire with fire, try responding to negativity with positivity. It may not change the other person, but it will keep him or her from changing you.

4. Employees rarely treat customers better than their employer treats them.

One of the biggest complaints I get from employees is that their manager wants them to be nice to customers even though the manager isn’t nice to them. Treating employees differently than you expect them to treat customers is shortsighted, if not delusional. You communicate more powerfully with your behavior than you do with your words. Unfortunately, just as good behavior can be paid forward, poor behavior can be passed on as well. As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”

5. Nice isn’t enough if you’re not competent.

If you’re about to undergo surgery, your first concern is that your surgeon is competent and capable. All the niceness in the world is no substitute if the doctor is a hack. Once the competency expectation is met, a relationship is the icing on the cake. A doctor who is competent and who makes the time to take a personal interest, communicate clearly, and express empathy will have a far larger and more committed patient base than a doctor who is merely good at what he or she does. On the flip side, studies show that the number one factor in malpractice suits is a breakdown in doctor-Patient  communication.

Relationship is important, but make sure you’re offering a good product and good service first.

6. Relationships aren’t built in a day.

Many people in the marketplace seem to have “Relationship ADD”— they expect instant payback from customers, and  when they don’t get it, they lose interest and abandon the customer altogether.

We build relationships over time by giving those we interact with our consistent and undivided attention. I worked for a sales organization where the sales manager told us, “Sell ’em and forget ’em. You don’t have time to get to know customers.” With such a mismatch in values, I knew my time there would be short. And as it turned out, the sales manager didn’t stay long either.

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Mark’s latest book, Fred 2.0 New Ideas on How to Keep Delivering Extraordinary Results, is now available. Visit www.Fred2Book.com now to learn more and gain instant access to a Fred 2.0 “EXTRAordinary Results” Resource Kit.

Michele Klein, HR Manager for Fidelity Exploration and Production (a large player in the booming oil and gas industry) was doing an exit interview with an engineer who was leaving to take a similar job with a competitor. As her final question, she asked, “If we had known that you were thinking about leaving several months ago, would there have been anything we could have done to keep you?”

“Absolutely.” the engineer replied. “I didn’t realize that you had bigger plans for me. Nobody ever told me.”

But by then, it was too late.

So Michele and her team decided that the best way to circumvent future exit interviews was to begin to conduct stay interviews.

“I read some books on the concept of stay interviews, discussed it with a colleague, and put together a schedule that would allow me to interview every employee every 18 months.” Klein told me.  “Each interview lasts about thirty minutes, and our people now look forward to them.”

Then again, what employee wouldn’t want management to know how they really feel about their job?

Fidelity employs about 200 people, many of which are geologists, chemical engineers, and other professionals in positions of high demand and short supply.  Turnover is a major issue in oil and gas with fresh-out-of-college engineers commanding starting salaries of $80K per year and more.  Headhunters are having a field day finding and selling talent to the highest bidders, and Klein says, “…no one leaves for a job that isn’t paying at least ten percent more.”

That’s why Michele Klein says it’s her goal to do at least two stay interviews per week, with each interview conducted face-to-face as opposed to over the phone or online.  “There’s something about that personal connection that makes this process work.” she said. “The interviews allow me to find out what our people like about working for us, what they don’t like, and what they’d like to see changed.”

GET INSIDE THEIR HEAD AND THEIR HEART

Klein said that she has a list of ten questions that guide her, but she’s always willing to go wherever the interview takes her.  Among those questions on her list, are “What makes a great day of work for you?” “Are we using your talents effectively?” and “When you do a great job, what’s the best way we can recognize you?”

Her favorite question, and the one that Klein says is the most revealing is “What is the one thing about your job that, if it changed, would cause you to leave?”

I can’t think of a more valuable piece of information for any manager wanting to stem the heartbreak of turnover.

Take a minute to imagine how much more effectively you could manage, motivate, and retain your cherished employees if you only knew how they really felt about their jobs and your culture.

Then take a page from Michele at Fidelity and stop imagining.

Go ask them.

“…but he interviewed so well!” the frustrated manager lamented at a leadership conference I presented for last week.  “He was so sharp…so prepared.  I thought he’d be a great fit. But when he came in for training, he was like a totally different person.”

“That’s because you didn’t interview him. You probably interviewed his parents.” I replied.

When you discover that a good friend, colleague, or your own son or daughter is going to interview for a job, naturally you want to help them. After all, you’ve been through many interviews, and you know what it takes to make a great first impression and stand out from the crowd.  So if they’re open to suggestions, you let them know some of the questions they’ll likely be asked, and coach them on how they should answer those questions.

And if you were to direct that individual to go search for a book on ‘how to interview for a job’ on Amazon, they’d have more than 6200 from which to chose.  There’s no shortage of materials and resources to help them prepare for the interview.

But if this individual is asked the questions you or one of those books predicted they’d be asked, and they answered those questions exactly the way in which it was suggested they answered and, in fact, got the job, …would they be able to keep it?

WHO IS THE REAL APPLICANT?

The ultimate goal of an interview is to determine whether the person sitting in front of you has the skills, the attitude, and the core work ethic values that you know are essential for success in your organization.  If they provide the right answers, but don’t personally align with those answers, you’re going to make a bad hire.

The solution is to ask interview questions they haven’t been coached on how to answer.  These aren’t trick questions, but rather questions that cause an applicant to think, reflect on their own experience, and respond in an authentic way.  If their response merits further investigation, you should be prepared with follow-up questions that provide a deeper look into how your candidate’s skill set and character aligns with your needs and your culture.

UP YOUR INTERVIEW GAME

If you want to make certain the interviewee is the person you are actually hiring, start fresh. Write down all the questions you typically ask in an interview; those you consider ‘staples’.  Review that list, and if you remember ever being asked any of those questions, eliminate them from your repertoire.   Even if you are the originator of a question, and it’s one you’ve been using for more than 2 or 3 years, it’s probably now part of the public domain and your applicants have been prepped on how to respond. Delete those as well.

As you rethink your interview questions, begin with the end in mind.  Carefully consider the combination of skill sets and core values you require for each position. Then create a series of new, meaningful questions that enable you to determine if the person in front of you is, in fact, the real deal or a dummy being manipulated by someone behind the curtain.

It made for a dreadful commute.

The crater-like potholes dotting the main thoroughfare near my office were wreaking havoc on my car’s alignment. I wasn’t the only unhappy camper. The city was inundated with complaints from angry neighbors and shopkeepers who demanded repairs. Finally, a road-crew was sent to fill the gaping cavities and restore drivability to the busy street, and they did a very nice job.

Do you think the city has received any thank you calls from the neighbors and shopkeepers in the area? I’m certainly happy about the repairs, but I haven’t called anybody down at City Hall. My guess is that no one else has, either.

You and I expect our highways and byways to be smooth. After all, we’re taxed a sizable portion of our hard-earned money to keep them pothole-free. It would be a newsworthy story if a resident ever called the city to express deep appreciation for a smooth street.

Similarly, we expect our employees to perform the job they were hired to do for the wage we are paying them. If they go far above and beyond the norm, they will be recognized, promoted, and given a raise. If they screw up, they’re going to hear about it. Those who simply do their job, get to keep their job. And that should be enough, right?

Not really.

Most managers I encounter are perpetual pothole patchers. They feel as though it’s their job to maintain a smooth road, so they’re always on the lookout for the potholes and are quick to call out every crack and imperfection. Under this leadership style, the only ones who ever get any attention are the top 10% overachievers and the bottom 10% who usually get reprimanded and eventually fired. The 80% that lie somewhere in between exceptional and unacceptable are generally ignored.

Effective managers, however, are not satisfied with routine road maintenance. They realize that in order to turn a road into a superhighway of productivity and profitability, they must proactively acknowledge—and even reward—those 80-percenters who are doing their jobs capably. Rather than focusing on the potholes, they develop the habit of consistently connecting in a positive way with those who are doing their jobs adequately.

This philosophy does not sit well with old school managers who, themselves, have never been praised for just meeting expectations. It goes completely against the grain of how most were treated when they were coming up through the ranks. So if you’re among this constituency, relax. You’re in the majority. But just because you don’t need strokes for doing your job, don’t fool yourself into thinking your workforce feels the same way.

WIRED FOR ATTENTION

There’s a growing segment of the labor pool that arrives at your workplace preconditioned to expect positive reinforcement for simply meeting your expectations. They grew up in a time when every one on their team got a participation trophy and probably had parents who continually reminded them that they were ‘special.’ These are workers who aren’t going to respond to, or even accept, a pothole-management style.

That’s why you might want to work on positively connecting with your team members even when they haven’t set any world records. I’m not advocating that you give false praise; as most can spot a phony at 50 paces and it will turn them off. Rather, I’m suggesting you develop a habit of looking beyond the potholes for that which is worthy of praise–or at least some attention–and focus the majority of your energies there.

TRACK AND GRADE YOUR INTERACTIONS

Start a daily log of how you are connecting with each member of your team. For each of your direct reports, give yourself one point for every positive interaction and take one away for each negative interaction. But also deduct a point for each shift where you’ve neither criticized nor affirmed their efforts or results. If after two weeks you notice an individual who had a negative total, they are likely disengaged, and may be contemplating leaving for greener pastures.

Great cultures are born when everyone on a team feels like their contributions are important, noticed and appreciated.

Don’t wait for any employee to move a mountain before you notice them and demonstrate your approval.

Positivity breeds performance, and engagement.