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David Maxfield

David Maxfield explains what the top five most catastrophic comments are fatal to your career.

Pink Slips of the Tongue: How to Recover From a Catastrophic Comment

In a recent study on change management, my colleagues and I found that 97 percent of employees report they have some career-limiting habit that keeps them from achieving their potential at work. These habits cost employees raises and promotions they might have otherwise received.Take Rick, for example. His manager—who also happens to be the CEO—describes him as both brilliant and a tyrant. He recently told Rick he is not on the succession plan for the CEO position because the board believes his bad temper would destroy the company.That comment from Rick’s manager underscores the other key findings in the study. The study shows the vast majority of managers are pessimistic their employees will ever change their career-limiting habit. In fact, managers report that only 10 to 20 percent of their employees actually make profound and lasting changes to their career-limiting habit.Here are the top 5 career-limiting habits:Unreliability"it's not my JobProcrastinationResistance to changeNegative attitudeSo, why do so few succeed at reversing their bad habits? The mistake we often make is we put far too many eggs in the “willpower” basket. We say to ourselves, “I’ll just do it!” as if we could bend our entire universe with the force of our will. As managers, we often look at an employee who knows he or she should change but doesn’t, assuming that he or she is lazy or unmotivated. That is usually not the case.  It turns out there is an exponentially more successful approach to influencing change then simply gutting it out. There are six sources of influence that explain why we make the choices we do. These sources target both our motivation and ability on a personal, social and structural level. Therefore, when employees rely solely on their willpower to create change, they fail to consider the five other sources of influence that determine their actions. For example, perhaps they don’t know how to improve, or they lack the social support; it also may be that the behaviors that are rewarded in the workplace are counter-productive to their end goal. Managers can help employees to achieve greater results by implementing strategies within the six sources of influence. Flash forward to the future. The best employee motivation is to help employees visit their “default future”—the career they’ll have if they are repeatedly passed up for promotion. Help them visualize the money they’ll lose and opportunities they’ll miss. Specifically, if a 30-year-old employee earning $60,000 is passed up for a promotion with a 2 percent raise, they’ll incur a loss of $59,780 over the lifespan of their career. Invest in professional development. New habits always require new skills. Help employees actively develop the skills they’ll need to be viewed as a top performer through training, workshops or books. Hang with the hard-workers. The bad attitudes and habits that keep people back are likely enabled, tolerated or encouraged by others. Encourage struggling employees to associate with hard-working colleagues who share similar career goals. Find a mentor. Changing habits requires help. If you can’t mentor a struggling employee personally, help him or her find a mentor who will encourage their progression and navigate career development opportunities within the organization.Put skin in the game. Reward employees for reaching short-term goals by placing money at risk. For example, tie small bonuses, rewards or incentives to their ability to meet their goals in their next employee performance review.Control the workspace. Make employees’ new habits easier by enlisting the power of their surroundings. If they’d benefit from close association with another team, relocate their office space.Our research has shown that by following a change model that’s informed by good science, the differences in effectiveness are not merely incremental, they are exponential.Managers can help employees increase their productivity by understanding employee behavior and enabling employees with a multi-faceted improvement plan. When we escape the willpower trap and develop competence in engaging all six sources of influence, we can change behavior and influence others for good.About David MaxfieldDavid Maxfield is the New York Times best-selling co-author of Change Anything and Influencer. Maxfield is also the vice president of research for VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. The company has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and trained 800,000 people worldwide.

Overcoming career-limiting habits

One universal leadership concern is how to manage employees without authority. What can you do when you are held accountable for results, but don’t have formal authority to hold your employees accountable?    I’ve worked in organizations in which this kind of frustration became so bad that managers resorted to fistfights. As you can imagine, these slugfests had the opposite effect. They stimulated cycles of retaliation and revenge.    The good news is that managing without authority causes leaders to focus on building commitment and engagement, rather than settling for obedience and compliance. Here are a few steps for managing without authority.Build Mutual PurposeBegin by identifying a mutual purpose—broad goals that both you and your employees share. When I’m consulting, I often ask both managers and employees to write down their goals. Then they compare. They usually find that they share several of the same goals. At a broad level, these goals usually include “being competitive,” “making a difference,” and “keeping my job.” These principles create enough common ground to get started. They are goals leaders and direct reports can pursue together.**Focus on Two to Three Crucial Moments and Vital Behaviors**Identify the highest-leverage changes your team can make and focus on achieving them. Turn this process into a small-scale experiment that involves your team. Your team’s goal is to prove that these small changes produce big improvements that further your common goals.Here are a few examples of crucial moments and vital behaviors used at a transmission plant:•    I will notice when my machine is not working and shut it down before it produces scrap.•    I will perform basic diagnostic steps before calling maintenance.•    I will take basic actions—clean sensors, replace blades, and reboot—before calling maintenance.Jointly Remove Barriers to ActionSome employees may not want to act on the vital behaviors the team identifies. Or, they may agree to act on them, but then fail to follow through. When employees disappoint you in these ways, begin by giving them the benefit of the doubt. Assume they have a good reason, and ask them about it.For example, employees in the transmission plant didn’t want to clean the sensors before calling maintenance. That surprised us, so  we asked why. They responded with a lot of frustration and anger. It turned out that the coolant in the machines was black and gooey, and nobody wanted it to ruin their clothes. Our second question was, “Why is the coolant black and gooey?” The answer to that question turned out to be more complicated than expected, and solving the issue saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as improved the lives of the employees who had to deal with it.More important, jointly removing barriers demonstrates good faith—yours and that of your employees. It also builds credibility and common ground. However, not every barrier can be removed. You need people to be motivated enough to overcome the routine barriers that make work, work.Use Natural Consequences to Explain PrioritiesManaging without authority means steering clear of your power. You don’t want to threaten to impose consequences—first, because you may not have the authority to follow through, and second, because you don’t want to be the reason the person does or does not comply. You want people to do the right thing because they understand and agree that it’s the right thing to do.The way you motivate without authority is by explaining the logical reasons for taking an action. You explain the natural consequences—the logical results of taking or not taking the action. At the transmission plant, one of the natural consequences of cleaning the sensors themselves was that it would prevent at least one-half hour of down time. The employees already knew this, but weren’t especially motivated by it. They didn’t mind working longer days. In fact, they liked the overtime pay.However, there were other consequences that were more motivating. For example, their department’s productivity was charted against similar departments across the organization and across the world. They were very motivated to show that they were just as productive as their colleagues in Mexico and China.The best managers—even those who have formal power—do their best to manage without authority.David Maxfield is the New York Times best-selling co-author of Change Anything and Influencer. Maxfield is also the vice president of research for VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance. The company has consulted with more than 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and trained 800,000 people worldwide.