These are just a few of the day-t0-day challenges members of remote teams are asked to face.  All difficult situations, especially for anyone accustomed to working in a co-located environment.   So, as more and more organizations take the remote plunge, it’s inevitable that a new set of leadership rules are almost daily being developed.  One of which is: Not everyone is geared to work well when working remotely.

Translation: your star in-house player, the person you depend upon to save the day when things get chaotic…despite that Hundred Percenter quality; he or she may fail if asked to work remotely.   What’s more, you may be surprised when you start to dig into the reasons why.  It takes a certain kind of personality to be an MVP in the remote work world.  But as many leaders have already discovered, the factors that govern success are not always what intuitively comes to mind.

For instance, it’s a commonly held belief that the quiet types (the folks who keep to themselves) are the high performers in remote work situations.  But think about it. If you’ve ever worked remotely, even for a day or two, you know how isolating it can be.  And that’s true even for those people who absolutely love their solitude. 

The fact is, it’s the outgoing personalities; people who are connected and who show a natural knack for building bonds, that make the most successful remote employees.   Technology can do a lot, and we’re continually provided with amazing new tools.  But no gadget or program can ‘fix’ someone who is reluctant to reach out and interact—or ‘plug in’ in a person who feels compelled to withdraw at the first signs of stress or trouble.

That mindset may buy you a long lease on the status quo, which may feel safe at the moment.  But when was the last time the status quo produced something exceptional?  Something like the iPad, iPod, X-Box, Amazon Kindle, Google or the Human Genome Project.  All great successes that arrived on the coat tails of some element of risk.  Or consider the successes of some of the more famous risk takers: Bill Gates who dropped out of college to start Microsoft.  Or Jeff Bezos, who quit a high-paying job to start up Amazon.com.  Both of who chose to push the edge on their potential rather than settle for the status quo.

We’re not all quite as naturally gutsy as Gates and Bezos, though. Sometimes even the most talented folks need a push from a strong leader to make them take the leap and go beyond self-imposed limitations—past the lure of being just good enough.  Assigning employees truly challenging or HARD goals (Heartfelt, Animated, Required, Difficult) is one way 100% Leaders encourage this kind of innovation. 

It’s your goal, and that means you’re in charge and your fingers are firmly on the controls.  But by lifting the often stifling restrictions found in the typical goal (namely a requirement that it be achievable and realistic), you open your people up to a world of previously unexplored possibilities.  A world where taking an element of risk can provide a big pay off. Instead of issuing a warning that says, “Hold on, don’t take too big a bite, stay within your limitations,” HARD goals send the message of, “What I propose is going to be a challenge, and I don’t have all the answers.  I’m depending on your knowledge and innovation to get us there.”

Get your people feeling safe to step up to the HARD goal plate by openly rewarding employees who show incentive to take a risk: even when the result of that risk is only partial success or failure.   Of course, I don’t mean foolish and wild risk.  But rather real and valuable risk, where someone pushed past the status quo and tested his or her limits to try and effect something great.  Create enviable heroes, workplace celebrities that people want to emulate, whenever anyone goes beyond doing what’s easy— to do what’s right.

In response to this, many organizations go ahead and ask their people, “What do you want?” Most often in the form of employee surveys that ask direct questions like, “Do you have a friend at work?” or “Do you trust your boss?”  Here’s the thing, every survey question asked implies a promise that something positive will be done with the answer given.   

Granted, you may get some responses like, “Everything’s fine, I just want a new coffee pot in the break room.”  That’s the easy stuff.  But it gets more difficult when you’re told, “No, I don’t have any friends here.  What are you going to do about it?” or, “No, I don’t trust my boss one bit. In fact, I’ve already got one foot out the door because of it.”  That’s heavy stuff that can’t be ignored.  Bottom line; if you don’t know how to fix a situation, don’t risk destroying employee trust by asking about it until you do. 

We conducted a survey on what influences employees to trust the boss (one of the largest studies on this ever done).  Honesty and truthfulness, while important, did not top the list on what drives employee trust.  Rather, it was the extent to which leaders respond constructively to employees who bring them work-related problems. 

And yet, in many organizations, a solo ground rule exists: Trust is the result of honesty.  Not that’s there’s anything wrong with honesty.  I’m personally a big fan of it.  But it’s going to take affirmative action—as well as honesty—in order for your team to keep believing you’ll make good on your promises.  Then, even in situations where a promise does take a little longer than expected to materialize, your support system will remain strong against the resistance of the few folks who still might try to bring you down.

Where to start?  Look at each of your current employee survey questions and ask yourself:  Can I absolutely fix this if someone says, “I’m unhappy with this.  Do something”?  And, it’s not okay to sorta know what you might do or to take a guess.  I’m talking definitive fix here.  The step after that is to replace faulty employee survey questions with questions that relate to what it takes to feel passionate about giving 100 % in your organization.  And that’s fodder for a whole other blog.

Organize each of today’s incoming emails into one of the following 5 categories:

 1. Necessary for you right at this very moment.

2. Necessary for you, but at a later time.

3. Waste of time for you; perhaps useful for others.

4. Waste of time for everybody.

5. Beyond wasteful; actually created a problem

It’s typical to find only a very few emails that fit category one—which are the emails that truly justify the time spent reading them.

Now take the same five categories and assess the emails you sent out today. How many of them addressed something that was necessary for the reader right at that very moment? And how many could have waited an hour, two hours, or even until the end of the day to be sent? Maybe in an “FYI” collaboration of points that while important, are not so critical that they require someone to abort whatever they they’re doing to focus on an email. Most people stop whatever they’re doing to read incoming email. That means they have to refocus in order to continue with their work. A substantial time suck that can easily be avoided.

There are a number of factors leaders need to address in cutting down the email usage in an organization. However, there is a foundational question, which if you can inspire your folks to consider before hitting the Send button, will immediately start to eliminate unnecessary emails. The question is: What is the purpose of this email?

In it’s most constructive form, an email is a medium for gathering information and/or creating action on the part of the reader. If the message being sent does not request action or information (i.e. call a client, read a report, provide statistics from a recent survey) from the person to whom the email is addressed, the question must be asked, does this email really need to be sent?

The fact is, most leaders don’t focus on what their people are thinking about as they hit the Send button. Consequently, in boxes are stuffed to the gills.  This typically creates one of the following three reactions: defer the email (stick it in a subfolder and let it sit for eternity), delete the email without reading it (admit it, you do it too), or let the email linger (sitting indefinitely ignored in an inbox). These are all reactions that will go a long way in making sure the folks from whom you need information or action never even read your critical emails.

Stop the email madness.  Make it an organizational rule: if the message in an email doesn’t contain an urgent request for information or action, stop and ask if it really needs to be sent. 

We conducted a survey of over 500,000 leaders and employees and this was one of the questions we asked.  Turns out 77 % of leaders believe employees fall short when it comes to giving their all.  And they’re right because 72% of the employees admit blood, sweat and tears level effort doesn’t describe their current work ethic. 

That’s three quarters of the work force that admit they’re NOT pushing the envelope, NOT aspiring to greatness, and NOT proving wrong those who say “it can’t be done.”  And more than three quarters of leaders that admit they know the situation exists.  Those are some pretty uncomfortable numbers.

To borrow a memorable quote from Rosalynn Carter, “A leader takes people where they want to go.  A [100%] Leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.”  Most folks aren’t opposed to reaching excellence.  I’d wager that a good number of your employees already have the talent to get there— that’s why you hired them. But they need you to show them how to make the climb, and once there, how to maintain the success.

With some dedication and a true desire to change, anyone can become a 100% Leader.  Someone who takes average people and through challenge and connection unleashes their true potential to achieve extraordinary results.  A leader who doesn’t just accept people as they are, but who sees what an individual can become and cares enough to push that person beyond his or her self-imposed limitations.

To get started, I invite you to take our 100% Leader quiz; ten questions designed to assess your talents at developing employees that are happy to give blood, sweat and tears in exchange for greatness.

All information that has been circulating since the bottom fell out of the economy.  You know it, I know it and BusinessWeek knows it, but it still makes news.   That’s because even though the awareness is there, the number of leaders taking action to retain good employees are scary low.  The two main factors why are #1: in the struggle to make it in these difficult times retention is not something leaders are making time for, and #2: leaders simply don’t know what to do.

“But there’s no money!” is the cry of defense often heard these days.  Yes, benefits and compensation make people happy.  But when those things aren’t an option, it doesn’t mean employee retention efforts should come to a dead stop.  In fact, that’s exactly the time to amp up efforts to keep good people happy.  What’s more, our extensive research of employees in a wide range of industries shows that money is not the top motivator for high performers.  For Hundred Percenters, finding fulfillment and a sense of purpose in their work means far more than a paycheck.

Employees aren’t going to sit patiently by while their professional paths amble toward an uncertain future.  Driving retention requires taking positive action.  Find out what your people want, and if it’s practical and possible, make it happen.  Create work that engages employees: mind, body and soul.  Better yet, let your people tell you the kinds of projects that will inspire passion for the job.  Then delegate some time exclusively for executing those ideas.  Google calls it “20-percent time” and it’s responsible for 50% of their new products.  Sounds like a win-win to us.

A Monster.com survey from last spring showed 79% of jobholders were actively looking for new employment and the numbers can only have grown.  So don’t wait for the job market to pick up before you think about employee engagement; your best people may be long gone by then.

I’ve written before about SMART Goals and how their realistic and achievable nature establishes a dead end to greatness before anyone even sets out to make them happen.  But it seems there’s no time quite like the New Year to observe just how weak most people’s goal setting strategies really are.

“Don’t set yourself up for a ‘no-win’ situation,” every magazine article on making resolutions that stick seems to warn.  “The best way to avoid disappointment is to set goals you can attain.”  But are we really doing ourselves (or our waistlines) a favor by ditching a vow to “lose 50 lbs” for a softer, more achievable goal?

There are scientific studies that prove there’s a positive linear relationship between the difficulty of a task and the level of performance we give to that task.  We even did our own study to back it up and conclusively found, if you give most folks a HARD goal, something that pushes them to be more than they thought they could be; they are going to give their all to achieving it.  And while they are at it, they’ll feel more positive about themselves, their work, and the person who assigned the goal.

The explanation is easy: HARD goals instill confidence. They send a message that says, “I know this is hard and that’s exactly why I’m assigning it to you.  I believe in you; I know you can do this.”  And that message works whether the goal comes from an outside source, like a boss, or is self assigned.

Now, don’t misunderstand me.  Anyone can create an impossible goal that’s a guaranteed demotivator.  But that’s not what I’m talking about here.  I’m talking about pushing past realistic and achievable and facing the fear of goals that loom with some uncertainty.  To dare to do something that tests your limits and expands your skills— and pushes you to achieve something truly remarkable.

So go ahead, start 2010 out right and reach for the stars.  Set a HARD Goal; one that’s a little scary and that makes you question your capabilities. You’ll know you’re on the right track if you start to sweat a bit, and even better if you feel a roll of anxiety. Challenges are good; they’re what build character and make us better, stronger and wiser… something more than we were before.

It may “feel” nicer to make a correction by phrasing it as advice, “If it were me, I’d go with some brighter colors on that report.” However, there’s nothing in that statement that indicates a mandatory action.  It’s just advice, and when an employee fails to take that advice (after all, it sounds optional), the penalty is often harsher to take than it would have been to just hear up front; “You must use brighter colors on that report.”

Which would you prefer: a) staying late to rewrite a report because the boss made the directions sound optional and then freaked out when you didn’t take his advice or b) leaving on time because you were told what the boss wanted from the get go? 

There are five core reasons advice doesn’t work as constructive feedback:

 #1: Judgment- Giving advice sends a message that says, “You’re obviously not as smart as I am or you would have thought of this already.”

#2: Directive- As the boss, you have the right (and an obligation) to be directive.  But when you deliver directions as advice, it comes off sounding like a recommendation, and that leads to unclear directions.

#3:  Inflexibility- Advice offers two choices: take the advice or don’t take the advice.  The former tends to incite resentment and the latter fear.  A direct order is much easier for the ego to take.

#4: Narcissism- Admit it, we’ve all, at one time or another said, “If it were me, I’d do it this way…,” not because it “has” to be done that way, but rather to fill a personal emotional need.  There’s nothing constructive about that.

#5: Unsolicited- Unless someone has asked to be judged, corrected or directed (and not many of us do), being on the receiving end of advice typically raises the impenetrable walls of defensiveness.  Which means nothing is being heard.

There’s one golden rule for delivering constructive feedback: If something is mandatory, where an employee will face repercussion if they don’t do it an exact way, don’t even think about softening directions and corrections.  That means no Compliment Sandwiches and no advice; just the facts.  In the end, upon being rewarded for a job well done, your employees will thank you.

Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It’s inevitable, if you’re honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you’ll avoid the tough decisions, you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you’ll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset.

Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone “nicely” regardless of their contributions, you’ll simply ensure that the only people you’ll wind up angering are the most creative and productive in the organization.”

-Gen. Colin Powell

The economic waters are far from clear, but as the panic over imminent drowning continues to calm, some of the old flotsam and jetsam are rising back to the top.  And Gen Y is once again making headlines.   Ask.com’s Susan Heathfield not only names Gen Y as a top ten HR Trend of the Decade, she also presents the valid point that many Boomers, who find themselves unexpectedly out of a retirement plan due to the recession, are suddenly being asked to mentor Gen Yers, or even more problematic, finding themselves supervised by the younger generation.

The challenges of managing Gen Y are alive and well.  The recession was their first big blow, a clear message that life might not always deliver what they expect and demand.  But while it may have made them a bit more workplace savvy, it didn’t undo 20 some odd years of training that said “You’re the best.  You deserve it all”. 

As for the “old timers”, you know, Boomer and Gen X folks like me, it’s time take stock of what makes Gen Y tick and get busy creating a new set of rules to attract, retain, manage and motivate this unique generation of talent.  Employee engagement for Gen Y requires a balance between what the younger generation wants and what organizations are willing and able to give— and making sure older generation employees are comfortable with it all.

And it’s not just Gen Y we need to worry about.  The boundaries that define a generation are getting narrower as the speed of the world increases.  It used to be 30 years before a new generation jumped on to the work scene and shook up the status quo.  These days it’s more like ten years, and soon it will be five or less.  Leaders who cling to the old rules and who refuse to adapt to the inevitable are going to quickly find themselves out of the game.

Visit Managing Generation “Why” and start learning the new rules today.