Only 29% of Employees Think Leaders Do This Well. Do You? | Labor Day

September 7, 2020

Good morning! Happy Day of Honour and Recognition for those who Labour — especially with their physical strength, stamina, and skills — to benefit the rest of us — and all of us. Yours are noble vocations too seldom recognized and too often minimized. Thank you!

These Musings were to have been coming to you from our beloved little Seacliff cottage (rented) on the coast of Maine, but alas… the COVIDs. Next year?  We sure hope so.

• With ten thousand different plans (and counting) for when, where, how, and why schools will open and function, GOOD LUCK trying to remember what applies to you.
  • On one of my recent hikes I was buoyed by the sounds of school children coming through the open windows of a neighborhood school building.
  • Curious juxtaposition:  “No peanuts allowed in the building”… and I thought, you couldn’t eat them with a mask on anyway.
• A woman stopped me on the street last week to ask directions to the hospital; she was driving, I was hiking.
  • I thought for a moment to consider her best route and then I provided what I thought were clear, easy-to-understand oral instructions.
  • I know this city very well, even the construction zones, alleys, and detours.
  • About halfway through my step-by-step directions she sped away.  I hollered after her, “I only have you halfway there… !”
  • I think she might have written an entire workshop for me right then and there (thank you, mystery woman).

Only 29% of Employees Think Leaders Do This Well. Do You?

• This from my faithful reader and super-smart IT guy, Isaac:  “Leadership IQ’s new report, ‘The State of Leadership Development in 2020‘, surveyed 21,008 employees to assess leaders’ effectiveness…
  • …And one of the findings from this study is that only twenty-nine percent (29%) of employees say that their leader’s vision for the future always seems to be aligned with the organization’s.”
    • Looking for a good consultant, the seventy-one percent (71%) of you?!
• This from my faithful reader and 1976 Minnesota State Basketball Champion, Paul — as written by Bill Murtaugh:
  • (I have no idea if this is true, but if not, it should be.)
    • “Someone has discovered this remarkable fact:  A dense fog covering seven city blocks to a depth of one hundred feet is composed of less than one glass of water.  That amount of water is divided into about sixty billion tiny droplets.  Yet when those minute particles settle over a city or the countryside, they can almost blot out everything from your sight.
    • Many of us live our lives in a fog.  It’s not a physical fog, but more of an emotional or mental fog.  We allow a cupful of troubles to cloud our vision and dampen our spirits.  Anxiety, turmoil, and defeat strangle our thoughts.”  (Murtaugh)

McKinsey Report Demonstrates Need to Get COVID-19 Under Control to Restore Economy

• “An exceptional McKinsey report demonstrates that rebuilding the United States economy depends entirely upon getting the COVIDs under control.”  (George)
  • From McKinsey (Charumilind, Lamb, Greenberg, Singhal) — “Building public confidence requires limiting the spread of the COVIDs and creating conviction that public health measures will continue to be effective.  To be confident, the public needs reliable evidence of the following:
    • New case counts are low, and testing is sufficiently widespread for official counts to represent accurately actual conditions;
    • The number of serious COVID cases that require hospitalization can be effectively handled by the health system without impairing its capacity to deliver normal medical treatment;
    • Communication about health interventions by leaders is credible, consistent, and provided sufficiently in advance to let families and the public and private sectors plan;
    • Public health measures are delivered effectively and are sufficient to prevent increases in transmission;
    • Public health interventions, including those deployed for high risk and vulnerable populations, do not structurally prevent economic recovery.
    • Confidence is necessary for growth.”

Marriage

• At the request of my son and daughter-in-law and on the occasion of their recent wedding, I provided these pneumonic thoughts about marriage:
  • M — Take the macro view…
  • A — Annoying… you will be both annoyed and annoying…
  • R — Revenge, never…
  • R — Remember why…
  • I — Intimacy, not just the physical, but of equal importance:  Intellectual, social, emotional, spiritual… try to attain it…
  • A — Anger and Awe, try to let being in awe of each other cancel out the occasional but certain anger…
  • G — Go do stuff together…
  • E — Everything else, Everybody else… BAE — the kids have it right with this expression…
    • If you want the (just a bit) longer version, just click me back and I’ll be flattered.
      • Be well, kids — and safe — and buoyant — and happy!