Some time ago, before I left the BBC, I took part in a meeting about blogging with Mark Byford, the BBC’s Deputy Director General and the executive with primary responsibility for news and editorial standards. During the meeting he raised the familiar question about whether you could trust bloggers. In response I said that trusting individual bloggers on the first reading would be foolish but that over time one built up patterns, connections and associations that I did believe meant that you could trust bloggers – certainly when seen as a network. I also said that I increasingly didn’t “trust” BBC news in the sense that I found their coverage to be sensationalistic and focussed on the negatives in the world and that I and others were increasingly choosing not to “consume” it.

Any time I have been involved in, or close to, anything that became a news story I have been struck by how far from the truth most of the coverage has been. Extrapolate this to all the other stories covered in your average news day and you start to get worried.

Since leaving the BBC I have been asked to appear on a few news programmes on both radio and TV to comment on some story about the web. Each time I have been mildly disconcerted at the apparent lack of concern about my credibility as an expert. A couple of times the people involved already knew me, but the others have mostly got my name from a list and, apart from a phone call to check I am able to speak on the topic without being a complete arse, they seemed casual about putting me on air.

It would appear that this same casualness has been behind Alessio Rastani’s recent appearance on BBC News …

Thanks to the web I was able to do something about my instinct that this story wasn’t what it appeared to be and track the various attempts to dig into it. If I was just sitting passively consuming the news and trusting broadcasters to get it right, I would be none the wiser.

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Leaders face a near perfect storm today. Making sales and profit goals are tougher in the “new normal’, employee disengagement is near epic levels and Gallup research cites nearly one in three payroll dollars are lost because of disengagement.

The savvy leader begins to sort and understand what is going on in the larger economy and their own organization. One of the biggest challenges is an epic rush of resumes. Recent survey data from the Wall Street Journal, November 2009 cited nearly 87% of employees are distracted by thoughts, daydreams or plans to leave the organization. The 87% looks like this…60% actively seeking other employment, 21% networking, and 6% updating resumes. Bottomline, organizations may be about to experience a massive round of “free agency employees.”

The challenge for leaders is to reach out and engage employees… inspiring a new age of honesty and engagement. And reach out to actively disengaged employees. Often disengaged employees are fearful and they no longer trust…trust has evaporated. The loss of trust is serious and there is a cause and effect. The organization may not have met their needs.

Here are 3 tips to purge the wrong attitudes for excuses, whining and negativity.

1. “It’s the economy”, words of the employee blaming the economy. Every organization faces a tough economy. An employee who substitutes excuses for results is not a team player. The response: Discuss expectations of no tolerance for excuses. When mistakes happen, as they certainly will, the correct response is a simple “I’m sorry” and the employees adjustments if any to be sure mistakes are minimized.

2. “If only we had….” The whiner’s theme. It’s ok to find gaps and soft spots in the organization. But it serves no one to put energies into whining without smart solutions. The response: Ask that the whining to stop. Reach out and ask what could be better, what is missing? Ask employees for their personal commitment to help.

3. “Negative Nancy’ this is the naysayer, the one who loves to rain on everyone’s parade. The Response: When Negative Nancy says we “can’t”…respond… “I understand why we haven’t…tell us how we can”.

Try this as a leader. Write down all the things going on in your organization which bug you. Keep writing until you have at least a list of 20. Throw out the ones which are numbers…like sales numbers, profit…those results are simply symptoms of people issues. You want to focus on the human element. After the list of 20 personality irritants..the human things…group into patterns…keep working until you’ve sorted into a list of 3.

You’ve begun to sort and clarity…all will help you focus on the most important blockers to your organizations success. Your purpose is to clarify the 3 big blockers…the things that bug you…what does it call you to do? You may be ready for expert help to go to the next step. The next step is hard work…but the payoff is huge.

We’ve tackled big issues and big challenges and have been involved in just about every important phase of business. http://lighthouse-leadership.com By the way, do you want to learn more about creating a powerful workplace culture? If so, download our brand new free ebook Three Elegant Strategies for Your Organizations Survival Elegant Courage Jodi lead the cultural turnaround which was core to financial recovery. Mike is innovative and persistently explores new ideas.

Author: Mike Krutza
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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