No Yelling - Intimidation is not as Effective as Empowerment - By: Christine Casey Cooper

Empowerment if favored over intimidation by 79% of the respondents of an informal survey. This should not be shocking news. Most professionals will be far more responsive to friendly interactions at work. Empowerment is a motivator and your attrition rate can be cut by at least half, keeping your talent in place instead of losing it to your competition.

There is a need sometimes for firm and frank discussion especially when personal safety is the issue. There should be no question about conforming to safety rules around the plant. However, intimidation has results that are not productive:

- It breeds resentment and sabotage; yelling is taken as a personal attack on character and it builds resentment and destructive motivations.

- It is an out-of-control reaction to something that can be dismissed with grace and corrective encouragement for future improved actions.

- It affects productivity and shuts down enthusiasm. Time is wasted with negative talk and healing of battle wounds.

- It may precipitate charges of harassment, union organizing, stress, sick days, etc.

Additionally, it demotivates and destroys ambitions of being promoted within the company. There is not much to recommend in the way of intimidation.

Planning and Deadlines - Empowerment works best in a planned, controlled environment. One way to manage is by using tools such as Microsoft Project. There are several options, but the Gantt Chart, which was originally used effectively during times of military conflict, makes sense in the industrial and commercial setting, too. Tasks are listed in a tabular form, and there is an associated timeline with optional name tags. Daily or weekly follow up makes the chart jump off the screen, and other related parties will be privy to it in an office computer network environment. Your team will see it, and your boss will see how it goes as often as he/she wants to view it. It could be a simple sequential chart or an interactive chart showing important time sensitive and sequence interactions. As often as you update it, the timeline will progress with accomplished tasks being highlighted.

Planning generally flows from the top down, and the employee can run his own project schedule from the cues received from the boss's master plan. Or the employee can add or expand on the master plan.

Wally Adamchik, the author of No Yelling, claims that treating people with respect and developing relationships based on trust goes a long way towards effective management. One marine senior officer even claims that "You have to love your people to a fault."

About the Author

You'll find more management and leadership advice and anti-leadership advice from the Crass Captain at http://www.CrassCaptain.com . Find Christine Casey-Cooper's new book, entitled The Crass Captain's Guide to Organizational Dysfunction, on Amazon soon.

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