Leadership and What it is Not. Employees and What They Are.

As a business and management consultant for 38 years, working in 85 countries, I’m filled with opinions, bias, and a lot of “hands on reality”. As I read many of the articles on LinkedIn it’s my belief that “clichés” and “what should be” are overtaking what is, and what will be.

What I read and how I think:

“Leaders were once followers.”
Simply not true more often than not. There is only ONE leader in any company, and that person leads the managers to implement vision, productivity, and performance.

“My manager is terrible and it’s why I’m not doing well.”
Most managers are promoted from within, given no training, or worse, HR training on what to do, and many are promoted far beyond their ability to perform, or manage.
Many great performers, however, the “best employees”, are able to see past what they have to deal with and do great. And, many employees I work with that tell me how bad their managers are, when truly studied, are also not very good employees. There are ducks and geese at a company. Geese fly, ducks float around the pond.

“The owners/CEO/ Leaders make too much money and I don’t make enough.”
At public companies the CEO is paid by their skill level to build the stock price, have vision, and take liability for the financial statements. Unless a country limits earnings (making it Communistic) good luck in attracting top leaders to jobs that are beyond what most employees could even do, or understand. It’s called: Life is Not Fair.

“The best leaders are “servant leaders” and empower their employees.”
Servant leadership is illogical. Employee’s work for a company and the leader’s jobs is to develop and create innovation and/or productivity. It’s a great theory, but only in use successfully with a handful of public or large companies. It may work great at a small company, but often employees do not know enough to give more. Empirical evidence shows few public companies that embrace this model. There’s a reason.

“Empowering employees.” Makes sense, if they are given “pay per incentive” motivation, meaning when they perform more they are empowered more. I’ve seen far too many companies fall for the cliché of empowering employees by giving more freedoms, without training the employee in what being employed and empowered means.

“The more responsibility you give an employee the greater they will perform.”
Another cliché. Many studies show that up to 49% of employees spend less than half of their work day working, and only want “the job”. When I visit companies I “walk around” and study what people do. Motivation is within, not without (when someone motivates you it is you being motivated, not what they said or did, as it won’t work on all people in the same setting).

“Surround yourself with people better than yourself.”
This is spot on right, and what great leaders and managers do, but not all managers or leaders themselves are “great” and thus, fearful of hiring those “with better skills”. As a consulting firm we try to psychologically profile leaders, managers, and employees—professionally done, again not HR tests that categorize or limit.

“Inequitable pay makes an employee less motivated.”
If someone is being paid less than they can afford to live somewhere with, put some of the blame on the person not being paid well. A Subway restaurant employee that makes $8.50 an hour only needs to learn how to do 8 to 12 tasks, very simple ones, for what they earn. A Subway storeowner may invest $250,000 (borrowed or all the money they have) to open the store and works 7 days a week, often as a couple, and make $100k a year. They own one store. If they raise the price of their product 20% in many areas these franchisees begin to lose customers due to price, and can’t afford to hire more employees, or pay more.
We read all the “facts” of what it takes to make a living, but we never think as the employer, or storeowner, and thus limit our own thinking of what “value” really is.

Here’s an example:
A man I know is 32 and has only a high school education, but is self-taught in High tech, and began studying at 17 all of the high tech industry. He worked 60 Plus hours a week at low wages, and showed his employer loyalty and ability, and took on “more than others”; he now earns $140,000 a year, is with the same company, and has stock options and benefits. He chose a career, did not complain, constantly kept learning, and now is an asset. Employees should ask if they are “assets” or “liabilities” and everyone should face up in society to fair pay is earned.

“We need to force companies to pay employees more.”
If we do, this article is written for a socialistic or communistic society, and not a democracy, or capitalism. And even then, the employee pays more in taxes to have what socialism offers.

Think if it is a public company that the true owners are NOT the employees, but the stockholders, those buying stock in the company and expecting a dividend or higher price on the stock. These owners want so much, and the employee wants so much. Life is again unfair.

It always has been this way, and unless society changes worldwide, always will be.
There are solutions. Create “pay per incentive” performance for employees that as they do more, or are more productive, or cut costs, they are paid more.

Here’s another example:
Our company has a client that made metal boxes of stainless steel. The market place would only pay X for these boxes, and if the company (with 40 employees) has raised the price to increase wages, they would have sold fewer boxes and had to fire employees.

Or, they could have the same metal box made in China, where labor is much lower, and fired 30 of their employees and made more profits. The owners would have done better, the customer demanded a certain price, and there seemed “no solution”.

Our consulting firm “worked on the floor”; in other words, two of our consultants actually made boxes with the workers and made suggestions to all on ways to improve productivity. We then made an offer:

“Right now you earn $13.00 per hour and want to make $16.00. We can’t afford to pay you that. Would you be willing to make $10.00 per hour if you could earn $5.00 or more per hour if you increased production by 25%?”

This took time to “sell” and to help the employee understand, but our goal was to give them a raise without raising cost, but by increasing productivity.
The bottom line: within 6 months the employees were earning $16.00 to $18.00 an hour, sales were up, there were never backorders, and nothing needed to be outsourced. The workers became their own TEAM, and they chose how to increase wages.

This can happen at any company, based on gross profits, net margin and what the consumer will pay, but it takes leaders, managers and employees working together to make it work.

Chip Evans, PH.D.

www.theevansgroupllc.com