Your Job Includes Teaching Professionalism - Chapter 1 - Timeliness - Part 1

0:00Welcome to Manager Tools. This is Sarah. And I'm Mark. Today's podcast, your job includes teaching professionalism. Chapter one, timeliness, part one of two.

0:13Michael Auzenne: As always, our content has been crafted by humans, and we're now certified by Proudly Human. The questions this cast answers are, do I really have to teach basic professional skills? Yeah, you do. Why should I teach basic professional skills? Because your people don't know it and your organization needs it. Shouldn't employees know the basics? Doesn't matter whether they should or shouldn't. The question is, are you going to teach them? Yeah, exactly. If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. A repeatable, structured hiring process is one of the highest leveraged investments a manager can make, and most managers don't have one.

0:54Michael Auzenne: The Effective Hiring Manager Conference teaches your whole team a consistent interview mythology, so every hire reflects your standards and your process, not just whoever was in the room that day. Join us in Ottawa on September 15th. Learn more at manager-tools.com forward slash EHMC. All right, Mark, we are here today and we're going to, I'm going to say myth bust. Maybe that's the wrong word. But folks, today we're going to begin or we're going to talk about how we encourage you not to believe the news that organizations are changing so fundamentally that the core standards of professionalism that have long since existed in organizational life no longer apply.

1:44As the world becomes faster, actually those old rules of working together efficiently, effectively, they actually become even more important because the speed of work has wildly increased. I mean, the speed of AI alone adds immense speed to our day-to-day organizations. And because of that, we all need to teach the basics to those new people within our organizations. And things like timeliness is something that we must as managers, as leaders, make sure that we instill into our directs because a professional who isn't timely isn't a professional at all.

2:27Michael Auzenne: Yeah, exactly. We hear constantly from frustrated managers about their dismay at their directs, especially new or younger directs, often egged on by the total scam of generational management. You know, the new direct can't navigate common basic professional tasks. Sending a group Zoom invite, comparing two budgets for discrepancies, arranging an off-site location for a drinks meetup, planning the next quarter's worth of deliverables on a process improvement effort. And this generational management thing has emboldened managers to say, yeah, yeah, I knew that. And we'll talk about that in The Curse of Knowledge, but it's wrong.

3:16Michael Auzenne: It's just wrong. And companies and managers have always had to teach these skills. And unfortunately, people are acting like they shouldn't have to. And so if you don't teach skills. And to be honest, the workplace skills we're going to be talking about are not skills that are naturally taught. And you need to look no further than the fact that probably you, when you got promoted to manager, didn't get trained by your company. You didn't get taught by your company how to be a manager. You were expected to learn it on the go, you know, on the job. But look, if you want a competitive advantage, you shouldn't wait for people to mess up on these things, you should teach them.

3:58Michael Auzenne: You should make it a core part of your relationship with your directs that you're going to help them learn how to be professionals. Absolutely. I mean, I think, Mark, this is where me and some of our listeners shake our old angry fists in the air. Not in my day. Not in my day, I tell you. I didn't need to be taught by my manager to be on time. I just knew it. And to your point, we didn't all just know it. And frankly, you, friend, probably didn't know it yourself. So one of the things that we're here to do today really is just talk about this idea that this has always been how it is, folks. And just because you didn't realize it doesn't make it not true.

4:40Michael Auzenne: Well, I'm going to defend myself only slightly because as I've said a thousand times on cast over the last 21 years, I didn't know any of this stuff about managing and hiring and being executive when I was a manager. West Point didn't teach me. The Army didn't teach me. Procter & Gamble didn't teach me and so on. But I will say I did know timeliness because there's an old joke about West Point where Mike and I went to school. We were not educated. We were trained, which is sort of a snarky way to look down on West Point, even though the academics are quite rigorous. But yeah, you could not survive for a week at West Point if you did not embrace timeliness.

5:23Michael Auzenne: In fact, the Naval Academy, when they call minutes, which I won't describe, to notify people about upcoming formations, the last thing they say is, time, tide, and formation waits for no one. Right? Exactly. Time is first on that list for a reason. All right, so today's outline. First, we're going to start by talking about professionalism and the curse of knowledge. Then, timeliness is a top 10 principle of professionalism, followed by how to actually teach timeliness. And let's be clear, the teach in the outline or in the show notes, if you're a licensee, you can download this and read it whenever you want.

6:05Michael Auzenne: You can share with your directs as part of your license. Teach is in quotations, Joey Air quotes, because you're not going to set up classes to teach this stuff. That's not what we're suggesting you're going to do. So please don't shut us down and say, I'm not going to listen to that. I don't have time to teach my people timeliness. They should just know it because we're just going to talk about how to be a manager and train your people to be professionals in the area of timeliness. Exactly. Exactly. So first, professionalism and the curse of knowledge. Folks, the reasons we have to teach professionalism are twofold, really.

6:42One, we need it for our organizations to be effective. People being on time is important and not teaching it is silly. But also, two, the other reason we need to teach it is because new employees don't understand it. They don't come pre-programmed with professionalism, something that I actually say a lot when I'm teaching folks, Mark, is this idea that common sense isn't that common. And we all come to the table in organizational life being programmed by someone for something. And some of us had West Point. Some of us had really, really mean moms who were always insistent about timeliness.

7:24Michael Auzenne: Oh, I had that too. I thought you had both of them. But others didn't come pre-programmed with those same rules of order, standards of behavior. And again, they're really, really important for organizational life. So if you're direct income pre-programmed with that one, you're going to want to lean in. A good example, although I wouldn't put it in the top 10 of professionalism, is recognition that you lose your freedom of speech internally in an organization. And so we've had cases where companies, Microsoft's president's office was taken over by protesters disagreeing, I think, with Microsoft's political stand on the Mideast, which is a very touchy political subject, but strong feelings on both sides.

8:08Michael Auzenne: And we encourage people to live a full life. And if you feel strongly about a political idea, we encourage you to stand up for it and vote for it or vote the right people in who are going to agree with you. But you don't get to do that at work. This is a standard of professionalism. Again, probably not in the top 10, but something that's fundamental to human organizations, because human organizations, if they allow us to be the exact same at work than we are in our personal lives, they will be incredibly massively ineffective. Yeah, I mean, look, we need professionalism for our orgs, and I know it's a word, I feel strongly about the word, but I think some people roll their eyes at it, and I understand why.

8:51Michael Auzenne: They think of it as an old-fashioned thing, like etiquette. We need professionalism for our orgs to be effective because professionalism is the accepted culture of large and actually many midsize and small organizations. Now, look, when we say large, we don't mean to insult small organizations. We're simply referencing that many smaller organizations think they don't quite need the same level of professionalism as larger corporations, which is a bad idea because most smaller companies do, in fact, want to get larger. And if they don't embrace professionalism when they're small, they will struggle to get to the next level and they end up failing.

9:31Michael Auzenne: Yeah. So becoming larger is a metric of success for smaller companies, maybe not in terms of number of employees, but in terms of revenue and profitability and so on. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And folks, as we've said before, an organization's culture is nothing more than the sum of all its behaviors. In fact, we just recently recorded a podcast talking all about Drucker and... Culture of performance. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The idea that culture eats strategy for breakfast. That was a recent one. And folks, organizational cultural creation happens through thousands of interactions organically based on what works and what helps employees to be successful.

10:17So if you ask yourself what makes an organization successful, you're probably going to list all the basic tenets of professionalism. Integrity, timeliness, effectiveness, efficiency, communication, relationships, all of the normal ones are going to show up in that list. That's what we want our culture to look like. News reports might focus on beautiful or fancy or high-profit product lines, but if the company can't deliver on time or the product they make breaks really easily or they're unprofitable at their existing price or the features in their product don't work, the company won't succeed.

11:06The basics matter.

11:08Michael Auzenne: Yes, exactly. By the way, we want to be clear about something here. Some of you are probably thinking, well, that's old, that's what people in the previous generation thought, but it's actually the previous all generations, at least since the advent of large organizations. that's not to say that professionalism is forever unchanging. Many professionals would have included attire as part of professionalism years ago. Men had to wear suits and women had to wear skirts of a certain length and heels and all kinds of things. But those mores, those standards have changed as the culture has changed. Somebody said to me recently something to the effect of, oh, you're one of those guys that thinks we should all be in a suit.

11:54Michael Auzenne: And I say, no, I think you should dress for work, showing respect for your colleagues. One of the ways you show respect for colleagues is dress in a way that shows you're serious about your work. And it can't just be your personal comfort, especially if your personal comfort is not helpful to the work you're doing. And I think that it's cool that human beings are good at creating cultures that are successful, but also are constantly looking at how they can change. Now, look, if you're one of those people who says, yeah, I don't like any of the culture of modern large organizations, that's okay.

12:34Michael Auzenne: It's fine. But you won't thrive in a large organization unless you agree to follow the mores of its culture. And these are timeliness as the example in this chapter of this series is a core function, a core part of successful organizational culture. Yeah, that's exactly it. And folks, we don't think anyone would argue that the basic tenets of professionalism aren't necessary for the vast majority of an organization's successes. But that's only half the battle because employees new to large growing organizations, in the vast majority of cases, don't know how to behave professionally. And why would they?

13:24Michael Auzenne: They've never been in a large organization. Exactly. Why would they? Yeah. Educational institutions, for the most part, don't teach professionalism. I've talked about this probably 10 times in the last 20 years. There's a famous movie, a comedy, I can't remember which one, which was set at a university. And in the first session of a class, they're in an amphitheater with maybe 200 kids in the class. And the teacher is giving a lecture. And there are 200 students in the class sitting there. Then they show that class throughout the semester. And in the next session, the teacher is teaching. Maybe it's three, four weeks later.

14:04Michael Auzenne: And the teacher is teaching. And maybe only half the people are there. But there are a whole bunch of tape recorders down on the front row recording the lectures. So they don't have to be there at that time. Because perhaps they don't feel the need to be timely for an 8 a.m. class, for instance. And so they ask someone else to take their tape recorder and tape it. later the class is empty and the professor is teaching but there are hundreds of tape recorders at the very front of the room and i know you're laughing at tape recorders folks but this movie was made 30 years ago uh and in the final episode the teacher as i recall the teacher walks in starts a large tape reel thing of his presentation and then leaves the room leaves the room because why am I going to be here if you're not?

14:50Right. That's funny.

14:51Michael Auzenne: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's okay. Most people would argue that school teaches you a lot, whether you go just to high school or community college or a technical school or a college or university, or you get an advanced degree. There are some things that you can get away with not learning because they aren't explicitly taught. Now, I would argue that kids that show up, that students that show up on time to class. Overall, do better than those that don't, but I don't have any data on that, and please don't send me your data if you disagree. If you've been on a college campus lately, and you've seen student attire, it's very different from when I was there.

15:34Michael Auzenne: I'll tell the story. At the time, it really sort of shocked me. I went to Northwestern for years to talk. My good friend, Bill White, the head of the mechanical engineering department, asked me to come every year and address his students about their life after school, usually seniors, but sometimes juniors came in. There's usually, I don't know, anywhere between 40 to 100 people in the session. And I was talking about how to get ahead after you got out and talked about interviewing as well, because it's a thing that kids are worried about, students are worried about in their juniors and senior year.

16:11Michael Auzenne: And I had been in Chicago for client work. And so I went to Northwestern, which is in the suburbs. It's in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago proper. And I walked in and I had on my Burberry trench coat. I had on a suit and I was carrying my Louis Vuitton briefcase, maybe my most treasured travel possession. And I walked into the building, but the building had been remodeled and I wasn't sure how to get to Bill's office. And I stood there, I'm looking around, there are students streaming past me and I'm looking around, looking for signs, signposts, something to tell me where to go, not seeing anything at all.

16:55Michael Auzenne: Just, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm lost. There's no question I'm lost. It's a lovely campus, wonderful, wonderful university. And here comes a gentleman dressed like I am. And he says, can I help you, sir? I said, yes, hello. I'm Mark Hursman. He introduces himself. Unfortunately, his name is lost to memory. I said, I'm so sorry. I think there's some construction going on or whatever, but I'm here to speak to Bill White's class. And he says, oh, I know, Bill, I'll take you. And so we walked through, you know, several funny turns that I didn't remember. And we get to Bill's office, and he was astounded that this man was bringing me, because this man was the president of the university.

17:35Michael Auzenne: He was the president of the university. One should have the president escort them to their speaking engagement. Bill said to me, you know, you know how to get here, Mark. I said, yeah, Bill, but where I came in, there was some construction. I didn't know where to go. And we'll call him Joe. Joe here was kind enough to bring me by. And I said to Bill, because we He and I exchange emails regularly about how the students were doing and what my experience was with them and so on. And I was actually kind of disappointed because I stood there for probably two minutes looking around trying to find a waypoint.

18:11Michael Auzenne: And hundreds of students walked by me and not one of them said anything to me. Hey, can I help you? And I thought, for all they know, I'm conducting interviews because it's interview season. I might be hiring them. Yeah. Yeah. Imagine that one of them walked by and I recognized him and I said, the first question would be, hey, you saw me in the lobby and I was looking around not knowing where to go. Why didn't you stop and offer to help me? You know, that would have been the kind, polite, professional thing to do. And actually, the president of the university looked at me and says, I said, so I just have to say thank you.

18:50Michael Auzenne: It's very kind of you. He says, oh, Mark, I help anybody who walks into my building with a Louis Vuitton briefcase. For all he knew, I was a donor. I was on the board of regents or something. Yeah. That's funny. Yeah. I'll never forget that experience. And it reminded me again of, okay, fine. This is where these students are. These are very bright students. These are the cream of the crop, very hard to get in. And my niece went there and she's a genius. And I was disappointed. And then I realized, wait, wait, I can be disappointed or I can do something about it. And so I've told managers for years, don't be surprised at what your students, what your fresh college graduates or your high school graduates or your tech school graduates or your non-graduates come to you with.

19:41Michael Auzenne: You take for granted because you're swimming in the ocean all the time. Don't ask the fish about the water, but they're new to it and they're going to have to be trained on how organizations work and what behaviors they expect. Yeah, that's exactly it. And folks, we can, to Mark's point, we can't assume that college graduates are pre-trained on these professionalism behaviors. And certainly some professionalism things are picked up on in school, certainly some part-time jobs help people learn some of these basics. But folks, only a minority of them and not completely in any way, by any means. Yeah.

20:23So if you're managing in a large corporate organization, relying on what they learned before they got here is just not enough. Even new employees need to be brought up to speed across the whole range of professional behaviors. Because I assure you, if you don't spend the time setting the expectation, I'm going to use the analogy here for teaching professionalism, setting the expectation of professional behaviors, you're just going to find yourself wanting to give negative feedback when you could have just reverse engineered it and prevented it ever being needed to begin with. That's the idea here.

21:02Michael Auzenne: The M Conference only happens once a year. And it's deliberately kept small because the conversations that change how you lead require the right room, not a crowd. Senior professionals and accomplished executives come together for two days of focused development, real networking, and the kind of candid leadership discussions you simply won't find anywhere else. For more details, please visit manager-tools.com forward slash mconference. So then the question becomes, why then don't most managers do this when they bring someone new on board? Now, I would argue part of it is ego. I think that was probably true for me.

21:48Michael Auzenne: It's true for most people. The sense that, well, I did it the hard way. So, and apparently I succeeded. So maybe that's just the standard around here. But the actual answer, I believe, is what many of you, I'm sure, listening know, is what is known as the curse of knowledge. We've talked about this for two decades now in all three of our podcasts, Career Tools, Manager Tools, and Exec Tools. The curse of knowledge is once you learn something, you forgot you ever didn't know it, and you assume others know what you know, and it shocks you when they don't. And unfortunately, in a class of cultures, someone new to your company and you, which you take for granted because you've already learned it, their behavior looks unusual.

22:39Michael Auzenne: But it's not for them. They've just never been taught it. Yeah. I mean, I'd go a step further, Mark, and say it's not their problem at all. No, that's right. The curse of knowledge is our problem. Really? Yeah. It's the combination of our curse of knowledge combined with their lack of understanding of professional basics that robs individuals and therefore organizations of the necessary abilities and effectiveness that they need to succeed. We don't think we should have to teach it. But then we realize they need to learn it. So, because we haven't taught it, they haven't learned it, and here we are.

23:28Yeah.

23:28Michael Auzenne: And development is slowed. And development is slowed. Exactly. Exactly. Managers are frustrated. Directs are taking too long to develop because we didn't take the time that we probably should have at the beginning. Yeah. And that's part of the reason. You said time. That's part of the reason why I said at the outset that we're not going to have classes. We're not going to teach this stuff like the example I used in the movie about college, okay? But look, we have to be honest about this. We managers often make fools of ourselves in this situation. We complain about young people. And it's not youth, actually.

24:04Michael Auzenne: It's just newness to your organization. Having forgotten that we didn't know the same stuff that our new hires now don't know. We buy into the stupidity of generational management, which I talked about before. Oh, Gen Z, Gen Y, Gen A, Gen New, Gen Zero, whatever. I tell the story often. Hey, when it comes to Gen Z, have you heard that they want more alignment between their work and their personal life in terms of their values? Oh, yes, definitely. Have you heard that they want more work-family balance in life? Oh, yes, definitely. Have you heard that they really want the work that their organization does to be aligned and to be serving society.

24:47Michael Auzenne: Oh, definitely. And I say, those three lines are from the Wikipedia page for the baby boom generation. And I was born in 1960, and I'm right at the end, actually, the baby boom goes to 1964. Yeah. So that's been true for a long, long time. There's nothing new about that for Gen Y or millennials or Gen Z or whatever. And unfortunately, generational management is popular and it's popular because companies buy it. Okay. It wouldn't be popular if nobody bought it. They wouldn't, there wouldn't be an industry for it. Okay. Just because something is popular doesn't make it intelligent and generalization management is not intelligent.

25:26Yeah. You know, Mark, the one, an analogy or maybe something that's similar that I kind of think about is happy people are more productive. We hear things like Gen Z's want more work-life balance or happy people are more productive. And it sounds right enough that immediately we believe it. Like there's something there. We know there's something there. And because most of us haven't spent the time and energy that you and I have digging into this stuff, can't put our finger on the cause behind it. We feel like it must be right. So we buy in and it's lost endeavor. And we should have known that because millennials were the worst until they weren't anymore.

26:13It's all of that, right? But it sounds right enough that we buy.

26:19Michael Auzenne: Yeah. And look, folks, if you want a professional team, and you do, obviously. Yeah, I hope so. You're going to have to teach, and I say teach in Joey or quotes, professionalism and its tenets. And this series of casts is designed to help you do so. Thanks, folks. Join us again next week as we continue this topic. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course, follow, rate, and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only, please.