Sheriff’s Leadership Program

Yesterday, Sheriff Scott Jones presented twenty-five certificates of completion to the second graduating class of the Sheriff’s Leadership Program (SLP-2)!

The mission of the Sheriff’s Leadership Program is to encourage employees to enhance their leadership skills, so they emerge as active leaders and influence organizational culture. The program was implemented in 2015 and designed for front line employees. The program consists of three months, with two classes per month; totaling six days of instruction. The curriculum of the program was crafted to give employees the opportunity to succeed in their roles as informal leaders. Additionally, SLP prepares employees for future official leadership roles when promoted to the next level. All participants are expected, upon graduation, to model the leadership skills they were exposed to. Front-line staff, who commit three months to this personal development course in addition to their full-time job assignments, learn how to have positive impact within their worksites. Through dialogue and classroom discussion, they reviewed leadership concepts, methods, and case studies. The instructors set the tone of the training by providing impactful information in order to inspire all attendees to provide the best possible service to the community we serve.

JUL 2, 2018 @ 06:53 PM 5,918  The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets

How Mister Rogers Can Make You A More Effective Leader

Bruce Weinstein , CONTRIBUTOR Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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• I predict that the best picture of the year will be Morgan Neville’s deeply moving documentary about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
• Here are five ways that Mister Rogers can help you become a more effective leader.

AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar

I predict that the best picture of the year will be Morgan Neville’s deeply moving documentary about Fred Rogers, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The film, currently showing in cinemas across the U.S., reveals how a gentle Presbyterian minister in Pittsburgh wound up creating one of the most popular and critically acclaimed children's television shows of all time, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.

Here are five ways that Mister Rogers can help you become a more effective leader.

Never Forget That Every Human Being Has Inherent Dignity

When Rogers looked into the camera on his show, he imagined talking to one person. The short distance between the television screen and the child sitting in front of it is sacred space, he says. He kept this in mind with every word he chose and every tone of voice he used.

You will leave this film wanting to do the same. Imagine working in an organization where everyone treated you with the respect you deserve. Maybe you’re lucky enough to be employed by such a company. But if you’re not, pay attention to how Fred Rogers talks to others on the show and how they respond to such treatment.

That’s effective leadership.

Use Your Gifts To Elevate

Few things upset Rogers more than television being used to turn children into mindless consumers, treat them with contempt, make jokes at others’ expense or waste time with inanities. Clips from The Banana Splits, Pee Wee’s Playhouse and even Sesame Street illustrate how too often TV pandered to rather than elevated their target audience.

Rogers balked at being compared to the eternally optimistic Pollyanna. But he did believe in the possibility of television as a force for good.

In these troubled times, it’s worth remembering that leadership is most effective when we seek to enhance the lives of the people we work with and for.

Every Idea Can Be Made Accessible To A Wide Audience

One of the revelations of the the film for those unfamiliar with its subject (like me) is that Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood addressed some of the most difficult issues that children face, including divorce, violence in the news and death. There was no topic that Fred Rogers felt was too upsetting to take on.

For example, the day after U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was murdered, Rogers had one of the puppets on the show ask a human character, “What does  'assassination' mean?” I couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t that going too far? After all, kids in elementary school watched the show. Surely they needed to be protected from such ugliness, at least until they were old enough to handle it.

But part of Fred Rogers’ genius was knowing that kids have an insatiable desire to make sense of the world. Unlike too many adults who prefer to deal with problems by pretending they don’t exist, children want answers. If answers aren't available, they at least want their questions taken seriously. This is a portion of the script Rogers  wrote and performed in the aftermath of RFK’s murder.

Scene: Neighborhood of Make-Believe

Characters: Daniel (a sock puppet) and Lady Aberlin

Lady Aberlin: Have you heard that word ['assassination'] a lot today?

Daniel: Yes. And I didn’t know what it meant.

Lady Aberlin (speaking slowly and carefully): Well, it means somebody getting killed in a sort of surprise way.

Daniel: That’s what happened, you know. That man killed that other man.

Lady Aberlin: I know, and a lot of people are talking about it right now.

The two continue the discussion with a boldness and honesty that is truly revelatory. (Read a fascinating analysis of this episode here.)

Effective leaders find a way to speak the truth when it would be easy to ignore it, lie about it or attempt to make an ugly reality pretty.

Laugh At Good-Natured Jokes At You

I wondered if the film was going to show a clip from the Saturday Night Live parody, "Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood." [Spoiler alert]. It did. Then I wondered how Fred Rogers would respond, if he even knew it existed.

He speaks fondly about how Eddie Murphy met him, shouted “The real Mr. Rogers!,” and gave him a warm embrace. Rogers wasn’t too keen on other jokes about the show, such as a silly fictitious boxing match between him and Julia Child.

Rogers’ attitude toward good-natured ribbing reminded me of what Rick Wakeman, the on- and off-again keyboard player for the rock group Yes, once said: “We take our music, but not ourselves, very seriously.” If you don’t believe it, listen to the speech he gave when Yes was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Sometimes David Really Does Beat Goliath (If He's Courageous Enough)

President Richard M. Nixon proposed eliminating funding for public television, and he probably would have succeeded had not Fred Rogers testified before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee.

After listening to Rogers’ eloquent defense of public TV at its best, Senator John O. Pastore responded, “I think it’s wonderful. Looks like you just earned the $20 million.” (Watch his testimony here.)

Rogers evinced one of the ten crucial qualities of high-character leaders, courage. What is courage? It’s best defined by the slogan for Powerdermilk Biscuits, the made-up sponsor of A Prairie Home Companion(another publicly funded program): “It gives shy persons the strength to do what needs to be done.”

Effective leaders are courageous leaders. Like the late Tom Petty, they won’t back down. That’s enough pop culture references for today's column.

The Bottom Line

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is the film we need now. See it with people you love, then put its powerful message to work.

Warning: unless you have a heart of stone, there is one scene that will reduce you to a puddle of tears. I can’t recall a time when I cried so much in a movie theater. But you will be grateful for getting on the emotional roller coaster that this film represents, and it will help you become a more effective leader if you're willing to put its timely messages to work.

Check Bruce Weinstein's availability to speak on high-character leadership, business ethics and how to hire honest and accountable people here.

20 Employee Appreciation Ideas Your Team Will Love

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By James Marshall| May 18th, 2017|Employee Recognition

Employee recognition and appreciation has undoubtedly been proven for amazing results for any company willing to take the time to appreciate their employees. Employee appreciation has a low cost but a huge impact on your workforce.

According to Psychometrics:

When asked what leaders could do more of to improve engagement, 58% of respondents replied “Give recognition.”

In workplaces where opportunity and well-being were a valued part of the company culture, strong manager performance in recognizing employee performance has been shown to increase engagement by nearly 60%!

These are just a few of the benefits of employee appreciation, now let’s get into some awesome ideas you can implement right away.

1. Servant Leadership Cookoff

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Have the supervisory staff cook breakfast in the kitchen, or lunch on the grill for an afternoon. Teammates will love getting served by their leaders, and of course the free food. They’ll know you appreciate their labor when they see you labor to serve them. Don’t forget the eggless eggs and veggie patties if necessary.

2. Working at the Car Wash

Take that servant leader attitude just one step farther and wash a special employee’s car for them.

Employees love to see their managers doing work for them, and the entire team will enjoy. Get the entire management team involved for a company-wide carwash! Few things exemplify appreciation like humility. And the employees will appreciate driving home in a cleaner car.

3. Spot of Coffee Spot Bonus

Few things say “I appreciate you” more than a Starbucks gift card. Get the simple $5. versions so you can hand them out to the entire team.

If budget is a concern, purchase just a few of them and give them away to those who can answer important company trivia questions (e.g. What year was Dunder Mifflin founded?). This will serve as an exercise in appreciation and learning.

4. Saturday Morning Donuts & Bagels

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Is your staff coming in an extra day, or have they been working extra hard to meet an important deadline.

Stop by your nearest Donut or Bagel Shop on the way into work and make sure to buy enough for everyone on your team to get their employee appreciation snack. Be mindful of any dietary restrictions across your team and be sure to get a few gluten free or vegan selections so everyone can enjoy your generosity.

5. Roll out the TV

Will an upcoming shift coincide with a popular season finale on TV, or an important football game? Show your team how much you appreciate their outside interests by tuning the TV to their favorite sport so they can keep track of the score.

6. Give a Shout Out (Literally)

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Sometimes we just need to say it. Spend a few moments each day for a week randomly shouting out the good work your team members have done, recognizing them in front of their peers.

Did Jill close 40% of her orders last week? Shout it out! Did Bob just have his highest sales week ever? Shout that out too! Did someone just save an account? Let everyone know. They’ll feel appreciated and will want to do those things again and again.

7. Show & Tell

Some people love sharing how they were able to pull off their recent accomplishments. Invite them to put a 5 to 10 minute slideshow together so they can share it with the team.

Of course, if they’re the shy type they won’t appreciate you showing your appreciation for them by making them do a presentation in front of their peers. In this case, offer to present it for them!

8. Let Peers Praise Peers

Management may sometimes get accused of favoritism for recognizing superstars too much. In addition, we may overlook the superstars who are doing amazing things that are not covered by traditional metrics.

That’s where democracy comes in.

Ask your team to nominate and vote for their most exemplary colleagues. Happster is a workplace app that this feature built right in, and it makes the entire process fun too!

9. Put it in Writing

Do you have a company newsletter? Consider using it to recognize employees, or to show extra appreciation for teams that are working on challenging projects.

If you don’t have a company paper, consider posting to a special section of your company website, social media pages, or the company intranet. If you encounter restrictions to using your digital media for this purposes, pinning pictures and notes to the old fashioned bulletin board will do just fine.

10. Put it in Writing, and Make it Personal

Consider sending paper thank you notes to employees who recently had to work long hours in order to accomplish big things. Put a personalized message in the card and personally sign the card. To make it even more effective, place a stamp on it and snail mail it to their home address!

11. Personalized Pens, Mugs or Shirts

photo via zazzle

Expanding on the personalization theme, if your employees each have a favorite saying, sports team, or other associated characteristic consider memorializing that on a pen, mug or t-shirt.

For example, we know of one person on our team who likes to say, “You better believe it” to requests, as opposed to the traditional, “Yes.” He was thrilled with his “You Better Believe It” t-shirt.

12. Super Relevant Rewards

Did your employee ever tell you they have a cat? A dog? A bird? Then the next time they do something amazing, further personalize your appreciation by handing them a gift card for Petco or your local avian supply. This will send the message that you really do listen to your employees.

Do they love Asian food, Italian food, or have a favorite restaurant? That’s right, you know what to do.

Keep on learning about your employees so you can keep customizing your appreciation.

13. Work Remote Day

via GIPHY

Just about everyone loves a chance to work from home, and there’s no more affordable way to show your appreciation to someone than by allowing them put in the same productive hours in a place they don’t even have to drive to.

An extra day spent with their children or pets could re-energize them for their next day at the office. If they spending so much time with their children or pets turns out to be stressful, it will renew their appreciation for coming to the office. Either way it’s a win!

14. The Big Boss’s Office for a Day

We all love to sit in the boss’s seat, especially when we can look the part without any of the responsibilities. This is a fun way to show appreciation while perhaps planting a seed in the lucky employee’s psyche to aspire for higher.

15. Fitbit to be King

Your benefits manager or health insurance company may be able to get a hold of some Fitbits or other health promoting device that will work with your employees’ existing smart devices. This will track their number of steps, heart rate, etc. and let them know when they are doing well.

This may encourage your employees to get adequate exercise (especially after sitting in the boss’s seat all day) and therefore increase their energy levels. Then you’ll be appreciating them even further with some of the other items on this list for their improved efficiency.

16. Surprise Day Off

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Imagine walking into work one day only to find out that you didn’t have to.

As soon as you walk into the office you find out that you can walk right out and enjoy the rest of the day. With pay! Use this as a reward for an exceptional accomplishment. And if the employee still wants to work that day, let them use it sometime in the future.

This will encourage peers to work extra hard on their projects too, because they will want to be the next ones having a surprise day off. We wouldn’t recommend this particular expression of appreciation for those who have long commutes to work.

17. ½ Day School Day Work Day

Remember how much you loved a half day in school? And how much your parents hated it because they needed to find a babysitter? Remove that burden by rewarding a half day to a parent on the very same day their child has their half day in school.

More proof that you’ve been listening, and another win for you in the work life balance department!

18. A Massage Monday

You can skip the rest of the Health Fair and just bring in everyone’s favorite part: The Medical Message.

Many massage therapists just starting out in the business will be happy to give you a great deal as long as you let them hand out cards to your employees so they can grow their new business too. A portable massage table will easily fit in any corner of the room. Happiness is bound to ensue. And what better day than a Monday?

19. Dress Down / Dress Up Day

via GIPHY

Does your office typically require business attire? Then have a dress down day!

Jeans, shorts t-shirts–anything goes (within reason, of course). Does your office typically dress casually? Then have a dress up day! Pick a theme or an era (e.g. the 50’s) and ask your staff to recreate the scene. Reward the most authentically dressed according.

Another variation is to have management dress down, while the staff dresses up. The most important thing with this one is to change the dynamic to energize the teams, and to have fun in the process.

20. A Get out of Jail Free Card

Not literally. It’s more of a Get Out of Trouble Free card.

Sometimes your most talented employees are the least punctual, and these creative geniuses could benefit from the stress relief that comes with a free pass the next time they’re running late for work.

Give out a 15-minute late pass with no questions asked (and no warnings written) to express your appreciation, and they will feel it too.

For your chronically early personnel, give them a 15-minute leave early pass so that one day they can start enjoying post-work life just a little sooner than their peers.

You’ll be surprised how many miles they will go with just 15 minutes.

29 Fantastic Ways to Mentor and Develop Your Employees

29 Fantastic Ways to Mentor and Develop Your Employees

If there is one thing that sets apart the great managers from the rest of the crowd, it would be their ability to continuously develop employees and to grow the capability of their teams.  Unlike managers who simply focus on results, the leaders who place deliberate emphasis on employee development build morale and constantly increase their teams’ potential.  We recently discussed the 70-20-10 rule as a framework for employee development.  But how do these great leaders really develop employees?  What are some actual things we can do?  From simple, unplanned conversations to hosting deliberate feedback sessions, effective employee development comes down to one simple thing: surrounding your employees with opportunities for learning.  Here are 29 excellent ways you can develop your employees.

1. Send an Employee to a Training Class

Learning style is not just something that applies to students in grade school.  External training classes offer your employees a special setting outside the office to learn some new skills.  Set aside funds each year to allow your employees to take a course or a training class somewhere to develop new skills.  Afterwards, ask them to identify assignments that allow them to apply their new skills.

2.  Setup Recurring One on One Meetings

A regular one on one session with an employee serves as a deliberate, recurring check-in. By scheduling them on a periodic basis, employees can prepare topics for discussion in advance.  Further, planned sessions afford you as the manager the opportunity to gather any feedback and share it with your employee during the next one on one meeting.

3.  Ask Your Employee to Describe Their Career Highlight

Every employee is different and great managers know this. By asking an employee about a professional experience that they felt was particularly rewarding can help you identify other opportunities or projects that may resonate and motivate him or her. What was it that made that experience so memorable? What was it that they learned?  Do they see opportunities to have such an experience again?  Often times, the employee has never even thought about it, so the conversation itself can benefit them.

Coaching for Performance by John Whitmore

John Whitmore’s Coaching for Performanceis a light read containing many great tips and concepts that will help managers improve their mentoring and coaching skills. John uses various sport analogies and other simple examples to help convey ideas concerning the role of a coach, the relationship between coach and coachee, and the importance of teams, all of which translate well into the business world. Of particular use to the reader are the numerous lists of bulletized questions and notes, which serve as a quick reference guide for the reader.

4.  Tell Your Employee About Your Own Career Highlight

If there is one advantage you have over your employees, it’s your experience. Don’t be afraid to share a personal experience that you found helped you grow in your career.  Doing so can give your employee a different perspective on their career trajectory, or offer insight into solving challenges they may be facing.  Your younger staff has a lot to benefit from the experiences and things you’ve done in your career.  Tell them about it.

5.  Offer an Example of a Low Light in Your Career

We’ve all had those low moments.  When an employee is struggling through a situation, a great way to coach and mentor them is to share a similar experience you may have had that is relatable to their circumstance.  Having gone through it, your experience may help them reframe the issue or shed light on a potential solution.

6.  Ask an Employee to Walk You Through Their Work

Whether or not you have concerns about an employee’s performance, having an employee walk you through what they are doing can serve as a great touch-point for both you and the employee. Either during a one on one or simply by stopping by and asking how things are going can reveal issues or difficulties the employee is facing, and gives you a chance to offer some thoughts.  The key is to let them do most of the talking, so hold your comments until the end.

RELATED: Coaching Through Questions

7.  Ask the Employee What They Want to Learn

When you are struggling to identify development needs for you employee, or if they seem a little adrift in their career from a development standpoint, all you need to do is ask. The answers you get in response to a question like “what opportunities or experiences are you looking for at this point in your career?” will likely surprise you and may identify opportunities you had not previously considered.  An open conversation about learning will usually be received well.

Please Take A Moment to Answer This Question in Support of Our Management Research! NEW! Which best describes the metrics you track in your organization?  We do not have many metrics.  We track a handful of key things that are important.  We tend to track a lot of things.  Too many. If you can create a metric for it, we track it.

8.  Share Your Story

If you’ve hired the right people (and you’ve got the right attitude), your employees will be hungry to learn from you as the team leader. By sharing your own career story and the way your career evolved can give employees great insight into learning opportunities they may want to consider or skills they may feel would help them develop.  Personal stories are a great way to introduce your employees to new possibilities.

9.  Challenge Their Ideas

Every employee (including you) needs to be able to handle a little heat. Whether or not you agree with an employee’s decision in how they went about their work, it’s always a good idea to challenge their thought process. No need to be combative.  But by simply offering a counter opinion that undermines an employee’s decision can help them uncover potential blind spots in their thought process.  Challenging their ideas is also great training for them because he or she will ultimately encounter someone who really does disagree with their decision, and they will have to defend it.

10.  Document Something To Teach Accountability

If there is one thing that is particularly hard to teach employees (especially new employees), it is a sense of accountability. And it’s often difficult, too, for managers to hold employees accountable because there are so many things going on in your department on any given day.  Accountability can be taught by documenting things like actions, tasks and due dates and sharing them with the employee.  Seeing one’s name show up with a due date on the boss’s list will get their attention.  The key, of course, is that you have to follow-up in a timely manner.

Follow This Path by Curt Coffman and Gabriel Gonzalez-Molina

Follow This Path is a fantastic book and guide for managers looking to improve the performance of their teams. Coffman and Gonzalez-Molina tap into mountains of data from the Gallup Organization to demonstrate how the best results come to organizations that enable employees to use their raw talents to the fullest. This is a very easy read and is full of real examples of how a modern approach to running businesses results in enhanced financial performance.

11. Bring An Employee on a Business Trip with You

Great learning for employees takes place when they get to experience something new. If you’re going to see a client, or you are attending a meeting with a supplier, bring an employee along as a learning opportunity.  He or she can learn a lot from your interaction with the other party and can gain an appreciation for things like negotiating with external counterparts. Sure, there is a cost to it, but there are tremendous benefits to it as well.  More than likely your employee will shower you with questions after the visit about the things they learned and observed.

12. Have Employees Do a Dry Run

An essential skill for just about every employee is the ability to deliver a basic presentation. But before you put an employee in front of a room full of people, have them present their content to a smaller group of familiar faces. Not only will your employees learn the importance of preparation, but they will also learn from the feedback you and the other team members offer. Anything from content to flow, to his or her little nervous twitch are on the table in terms of feedback.  The best part about doing a dry run is that you can pull them aside later and give them a few extra pointers.  Start out by asking them how they think they did.

13.  Have an Employee Present to an Executive

Few experiences can be as intimidating for an employee as presenting to an executive within your firm who happens to be about 4 or 5 pay grades above them. But it’s a necessary experience for those employees who want to advance because they need to get comfortable with the targeted and direct questions that executives tend to ask. And the nature of the topics (being an audience internal to your organization) will differ than topics that will emerge in externally focused presentations.

RELATED: Tips For Making A Great Slide Presentation

14.  Have an Employee Present to a Customer

Presenting to a customer is where content and delivery really matter. Your customer is depending on you to get the job done and giving employees a chance to experience that dynamic is extremely important. Customer feedback can sometime be harsh, but it’s all part of the learning process. Further, by being an external audience, sensitivities to various topics will not be the same as those for an internal audience.

15.  Ask an Employee to Share Their Opinion

When you’re in a meeting, your more experienced employees will tend to dominate the conversation. Make it a point to ask one of your junior employees who is sitting in the back of the room for his or her opinion. The lesson taught, of course, is that their opinion counts and that it’s acceptable to speak up even in a room full of more seasoned veterans.  Bring them into every discussion.

The Oz Principle by Craig Hickman, Tom Smith and Roger Connors

The Oz Principle offers guidance on driving employee accountability, one of the most difficult managerial challenges.  A good read for managers and business leaders who are struggling to get the most from their employees and their business. 

16.  Have an Employee Teach Someone Else

You don’t know what you know until you teach. Have your employee take someone else under his or her wing for a while and serve as a mentor to another employee. Doing so is a great primer for developing leadership skills and knowing what it’s like to get results through other people.

17.  Ask Him/Her to Host A Meeting

Simply running a meeting can teach junior employees a number of important skills: preparation, organization, time management and the art of facilitating.  It doesn’t matter what the topic is.  Just give them some responsibility and let them learn through the process.

18.  Take an Employee to Lunch

Getting out of the office into a more relaxed environment is a great way to mentor employees. It gives you and the employee a chance to talk in a setting that is more comfortable than a stuffy cubicle city, and enables you to talk to the employee on a more personal level than you can in the office.  Informal conversations like this can identify potential challenges the employee might be facing that may be hard to pick up in the office or if your only interaction tends to be in meetings.

RELATED: How to Manage Poor Performers

19.  Have an Employee Interview a Job Candidate With You

Interviewing is a key managerial skill to have and something that takes a lot of practice to do well.  From time to time, bring an employee into the room with you for a phone screen or an in-person interview and let them ask questions of their own.  It will not only give them a chance to learn how you conduct an interview and the types of questions you ask, but it gives them a chance to evaluate the candidate with you after the interview. Finally, it offers you an opportunity to give them any feedback to help them improve those oh-so-important interview skills.

20.  Work Through A Translator

Though opportunities may be limited, working across a language barrier can be one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences one has the first time they go through it. However, there are hidden learning opportunities from this kind of experience.  When a translator is needed, the experience drives one to adjust his or her presentation style, pace, and word choice.  Working through a translator is a profoundly unique and educational experience.

21. Give Your Employee a Special Assignment

One challenge managers face is to keep the job engaging. When employees process purchase orders or develop blue prints all day long, things can get pretty boring in a hurry. So spice it up. By giving an employee a chance to work on a special project, or something a little outside their normal duties, they will develop new skills and ideas by simply doing something different.

22. Offer a Chance to Work in a Different Department

In few places do we as managers feel we have enough resources. But sometimes, even if for a short time, we have the ability to lend an employee to a different team. Even a brief stint working in another function gives employees a chance to learn and master new processes and experience how other departments work. The experience gives the employee an entirely new perspective on their own job, how they can improve the way they do the work, and how their work impacts others.

23.  Shadow Someone Else For a Day

From time to time, give your employees a chance to shadow someone else in your organization for a day. One limiter to career development is lacking a true understanding of how the organization or the business operates at a macro level. What is Supply Chain Management? What role does Customer Service really play? What does Finance really do? Give an employee one day every month to spend a few hours shadowing an experienced employee in another department to give the employee a glimpse of the big picture.