Ethics, DRUGS and Morality: How they affect Communication, Productivity and Everyday Life- Part II

Drugs in their many varied forms (alcohol, hard drugs, amphetamines and even tobacco) have a myriad of effects on our employees and companies. As mentioned in Part I of this series, 31% admit using drugs or alcohol, and these are for people who admit it. The percentage is most likely much higher.

At a business conference several years ago, a breakout session about the 12 Steps of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) was held. Originally, I had envisioned this to be how to use the process in other ways within a company. No, it was about actual AA, and it was attended by those who either had been on drugs of some form, or had direct family members who were on drugs. The statistic presented there was 40%. This was a major revelation at the time, because I had never seen this statistic before and it impacted me as to the ramifications that this holds for, CEOs, senior managers and C-Suite professionals and HR departments, which should be staggering if viewed from the proper perspective.

We always are wondering why our people may not be as engaged as we would like, or why our communication messages held with auditoriums of employees, or even chats at the water cooler, seem not to be as impactful as we would expect, and like them to be.

Possibly this statistic and topic may be part of the reason. Of course, some of the problem can be our delivery of the topics or making them relevant to those we are speaking to and/or with. However, if we take this drug statistic and also look at other distractions at work, such as illnesses of parents, children, relatives or even the general health of our employees, not to mention the medication being taken by employees at work, can we begin to see why people may not be as engaged as we like, or as productive as we expect? Might this figure of distracted, low engaged people be as high as 70%?

How much are the various drug forms affecting organizations and corporations? Significantly more than we probably care to know, if we acknowledge this statistic and the implications on productivity! Everything from absences, distractions, worry, stress, and general illness, impacts corporate sustainability, profitability and productivity. Government regulations in many countries now required companies to provide benefits for medical care, in various forms, for existing employees, including mental and support-group coverage for “illnesses.”

So this affects a company financially, from the FIRST day a new employee joins the company!

How do we address this issue from corporate communications, to employee manuals and benefits, and even more importantly assessing this in the pre-hire phase, before even bringing a person into our organization? Is this being done in your company? Is it being regularly communicated into the organization? Is it being reinforced with Mandatory Training Programs?

What do we discuss during the onboarding process? What procedures do we have in place to monitor compliance to existing drug policies and excessive absences? Are these in place within your company? If not why not? Can you afford NOT to address this issue on a regular basis?

Charisma can be Taught and Learned

In an earlier posting concerning a presentation I gave at the HR Training Congress in August, entitled:


Linking People, Strategy and Performance to Engagement and Training: "Revolutionary Research from Global Corporations"

Profiles International (PI) identified in new research in January 2011, and published in a book found on Amazon.com, entitled "Leadership Charisma", that Charisma, and Leadership Charisma in particular, is behavior based. Thus it is learn-able, can be coached, developed, and it can be trained. This is also supported and discussed by a recent article by Jessica Stillman entitled: "Charm 101: Charisma can be Taught". (The article can be found below).


PI's research was based on over 40,000 Managers and 400,000 employees world-wide, and it seems that more people and companies are becoming convinced of this fact, which before had only been debated without hard facts and research.

Why is Charisma important? Because Charismatic Leaders have been documented in numerous studies in the past, to have companies and teams that deliver even higher profitability and even more extraordinary products, than those with just good Leadership. This is accomplished through heightened "engagement".

Therefore, there is a cost benefit to hiring, or even more so now, developing and/or training managers to not only be good Leaders, but to become Charismatic Leaders. The ROI will easily justify training costs to develop Leadership Charisma in Managers!

So what are you and your HR team waiting for? Isn't it best to start now in developing even more effective Leaders especially grooming potential CEOs and Senior Executives? The choice is yours, but it is no longer a point to debate, but only a point to implement.

Charm 101: Charisma Can Be Taught

By Jessica Stillman

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(MoneyWatch)  With the death of Steve Jobs, the media's attention has turned to his legacy as a business leader and his ability to inspire teams to create extraordinary products. The man, in short, may have been prickly but he was also extremely charismatic.

Where does that ability to spellbind others to your cause come from? His biographer plumbed Jobs' past for answers, but recently psychologists took a more hands-on approach to the origins of charisma, testing whether this elusive and valuable quality can be explicitly taught.

Turns out, the answer appears to be yes. Researchers out of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland decided to see if charisma boot camp would be effective, conducting 360-degree evaluations of 34 managers and then sending them to a three-month charisma training course where they learned what the researchers dubbed CLTs or charismatic leader tactics. These include verbal techniques such as:

• Framing through metaphor
• Stories and anecdotes
• Demonstrating moral conviction
• Sharing the sentiments of the collective
• Setting high expectations
• Communicating confidence
• Using rhetorical devices such as contrasts, lists, and rhetorical questions

Body language, facial expression and using an animated tone of voice were also covered. The results, recently published in The Academy of Management Learning and Education, show that these charisma classes worked. "Managers who underwent training saw their charisma ratings significantly grow, relative to those who didn't," according to reports in BPS Occupational Digest.

To double check the results, the researchers also asked 41 MBA students to give the same speech before and after undergoing charisma training. After learning to master their CLTs, the MBA candidates were rated more trustworthy, competent, influential, and moving when they gave their speech.

There are caveats for potential student of charisma. The researchers warn that a significant time commitment is need to improve charisma -- remember their course lasted three months, not a matter of hours. And it's also likely that when a student starts actively attempting to become more charismatic, their performance may get worse before it gets better as their attempts to appear charismatic often come off as stilted and stereotypical at first, leading to more laughs than loyalty.

Still, for the charisma challenged, the research shows that more traits that we think of as inborn are actually teachable. That's good news for those who need to be more charismatic to advance in their careers and perhaps also a call to action for others who have given up on gaining leadership skills because they thought they simply lacked the knack.

Managing Your Time and Energy when on the Job and in your Life

There have been a number of studies in recent years identifying the need to manage our time, but even more importantly, there is now discussion in managing our energy. Many of us have probably noticed that at times we are not as sharp, as we are at others. As one ages, the phenomena becomes more evident and there is a greater need to care for one's self and health.

At times, we have possibly lived on 4 hours of sleep for literally years but "intellectually" and even more "intuitively," we understand that this can only last for a period of time, as it is not healthy on a long term basis. The adage of burning the candle at both ends, probably applies to most of us at one time or another, but we do need to recharge.

So learn and pay attention to your own energy cycles, as this is an essential first step. Are you a morning person, or a night person? But even more importantly, you will probably find certain times of the day, and at night, your productivity increases and at others, it wanes. As you learn about yourself, then you can begin to manage your work around these. Of course, there will be times you will not be able to adapt your schedule or project to work neatly around these times, as meetings are called, or an urgent project needs to be completed, but with diligence you will be able to help maximize your productivity throughout the day.

How can you manage your energy at work? Analyze your work day. You will probably see that there are surges in e-mails at certain times (just look at your e-mail list, there are time stamps), for example, or when you can best reach a client(s) or colleague(s), or there are regular assignments that need to be done. Certain days it is easier to reach people than others. Many studies show that normally Mondays and Fridays are the worst days to reach out to people, as companies have meetings on these two days to start out the week, or there are deadlines for project completion(s). Start to keep track of these surges by analyzing them, either by taking notes, or mentally observing them. You will probably begin to see that patterns do occur, daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly.

As an example, early morning calls to people may catch them before their work day has really started, or the e-mail that you send quickly comes back answered. Or, there are regular, less energy requiring activities that have to been done, so when your energy is lower, maybe this is the best time to tackle these items. Or conversely, for some people, by doing this exercise, it re-energizes them and sets them up for more "mind challenging" activities.

So, managing projects and your work cycles, can lead to heightened productivity, reduced stress and especially lead to sustained, long-term productivity. Obviously, for CEO's and Senior Managers this is even more important as world travel, with its associated jet lag, time changes and eating challenges all affect us.

The same can apply to your personal life. This has become critically important as we are globally connected, 24/7 with access to e-mail, texting, social media, television, print media, all coupled with mobile connectivity via computers, smart phones and now iPads and iReaders (Kindle, Nook).

Finally, plan some downtime, possibly away from these technological devices. Some peace and quiet to collect your thoughts, reflect on life and what goals you are fulfilling, and those that need to be initiated, can be wonderfully reinvigorating.

Good health is critical, and managing your energy and time can be major contributors to a long, enriching and productive life.

Related articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/jobs/24pre.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=The+Personal+Energy+Crisis&st=nyt

http://www.hf.faa.gov/docs/508/docs/cami/00_10.pdf

Objective of this blog

The objective of this blog is to provide CEOs, Senior Executives and Human Resource (HR) Managers, ideas and methods to increase: engagement, productivity, retention, and profitability for organizations and  their employees. These can apply most times to Non-Profit organizations also.

This blog is based on 35+ years with Fortune 100, and SME's (both public and private), as well as Turnaround and Change Management experience, actual present-day field observations and data, as well as current research, published and unpublished.