So my question regarding the Slater news flash.

Are ‘regular employees’ disrespected by customers only, or are they also frequently disrespected by their company management as well? Okay, maybe it’s a gimme question. Seriously though, why can’t we talk about it openly and publicly? Maybe my REAL question is, ‘Are bad bosses and unhealthy work environments going unchecked because many aren’t able to risk doing something about it?’ (Let’s not get into the choice-to-leave question; let’s just agree many people feel ’stuck’ in bad jobs.)

I’m watching my fave channel Direct News Mix 101 where I can jostle 8 news channels . (Policy wonk, news junkie, and integrity and fairness activist – that’s me, but I digress.)

Am I the only one who notices that interviews with flight attendants and other airline employees are all very carefully avoiding a full answer to the ‘What Caused This’ question regarding today’s hot topic, Slater? For example, Rene Foss, flight attendant and author of Around the World and in a Bad Mood was aked on The Joy Behar Show, (and I quote….)

“Steven Slater was a very proud JetBlue employee. He was nominated for the inflight values committee by his peers. What makes a guy like him want to snap at any particular time? Is is strictly the passengers, or how would you rate it percentage-wise, is it 50% passengers, 50% work hours, or other kind of stresses from the job?”

I’ll set aside my desire to critique  the interviewer’s poor questioning technique (A great question invites a great answer, not a political sidestep or a pick-and-choose which part of the question to which you want to respond.)

I do admire the attempt at getting to root cause or causes, the intention behind the question. As many journalists have. I also wanted the interviewer to pursue the peer nomination question further. This would circle back to uncover how a respected peer could flip out. (I have my theory, but I wanted to hear the flight attendant’s answer.)

What I noticed, though, was that Ms. Foss very easily skirted any reference to work conditions or work stressors. Others interviewed in other newscasts responded similarly, avoiding the office politic question, sometimes as easily, sometimes uncomfortably, including avoiding eye contact with the interviewer. Perhaps it was to protect their career or, in some cases, their job. Just sayin’

God forbids someone from actually complaining about their workplace, hours or their boss to a media person. It doesn’t matter how true it is, to voice an answer to a direct question is risky business for employees. In most private companies I know (and I’ve worked with literally hundreds of them over the last quarter century), to speak poorly of one’s company to media is, in fact, legitimate grounds for dismissal. I understand the reason from management’s perspective. I’ve also seen it misused and abused by more leadership teams than I care to acknowledge.

So we don’t know if the airlines contribute to employee stress, at least from this incident…. (okay, so I know better and you know better, but I digress again) We do know that service employees and regular, nice people are pulling for Steven Slater, so I suspect it’s more than the occasional crappy customer that pushes an employee over the edge. Steven Slater is, at least in the public’s eye today, no Mel Gibson.

So back to my question. Why are these flight attendants  unwilling to talk about what stressors come from their job environment? And  am I the only one who sees a lot of bad company behavior that unnecessarily adds to an already stressful customer-facing job?

I’d love to hear from you. And if you have a bad boss story to tell and want a safe place to put the word out, check out www.ebosswatch.com. Some great and fair advocy and evidence-based data aggregating going on over there. Check it out!

And if you want to talk about how to build and maintain healthy work relationships, with your boss, employees, and peers, contact me! My company can help. In the meantime, Be someone who makes someones work day a better one! I am.

The manager.

Research sponsored by Microsoft and major universities shows that virtual managers (even if only partially virtual) must be better at 3 things:

- communicating

- managing by results

- trusting employees to manage their own work habits.

Managing remotely requires a proactive and engaged approach to expand the emotional bandwidth in the team and across teams. Poor people skills are the 1^st and 2^nd reasons many C-Level Executives fail in the first two years. How well we work with people matters. If virtual, it matters even more. Collaborative software and technology have finally pretty much caught up to the promise, and with good strategy and training, technology is truly enabling virtual work. Nearly all parts of an organization engage electronically with their customers.

But people are still the key.

We are entering the third wave of virtual work and virtual collaboration, yet we still find ourselves spending more time traveling than we might. When any of us work in groups, people are part of the mix, and many are still more comfortable meeting face to face.

Thanks to increased energy prices, budget constrictions, better technology, and increasing desire to collaborate across distance, more of us find ourselves needing to spend less time traveling to manage our virtual teams and clients than we have in the past. Travel time and expenses are making traditional methods of relationship and project management ineffective.

Virtual management is a core competency in modern business culture. Everyone who wants to stick around will join the third wave of virtual collaboration armed with confidence and competence.

Without the usual face time to get to know one another, trust and work flow is built and supported differently virtually, as are communications, workflow, decision making, tracking results, and team development. The leader’s job is to build a wide path for trust to build, to proactively manage work and people as much as to manage production.

Over the years I have helped thousands of people and dozens of companies find ways to maximize success by effectively integrating virtual work into their customer and employee engagement processes. Telework programs have

-           built call centers without walls,

-           retained quality employees without geographic barriers

-           reduced real estate, travel and other hard & soft business costs.

In truth, virtual work is here to stay. According to The Conference Board, recent research for American Business Collaboration (ABC) found that more than 80 percent of workers today are working at a distance from colleagues, and this number is growing.

Want advice, help, or training to improve your ability to work and collaborate effectively, whether F2F, Virtual, or a hybrid of both? Call or email me! GroupONE Solutions now has a solid team of virtual experts in

- telework installations / expansions

- online facilitation

- collaborative software

- organization development and change management in global organizations and cross-organizational collaboration.

If you’d rather Do It Yourself, our OCTOBER-NOVEMBER SPECIAL is a $50 discount on our Virtual Team Tool Box, filled with over 80 tools, assessments, case studies, templates, tips and guidelines, and management / leadership resources.

The full tool box includes Working Virtually and The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams for only $249 through November 2008.

The tool box alone is available for only $123 and is fully downloadable.

Also consider University of Wisconsin’s new 2-day course, Working Virtually, November 12 – 14 in Milwaukee. It won’t be offered again until spring, 2009! “Working Virtually” is a must for anyone in a virtual work / collaborative environment regardless of your organization’s size. Leave with templates, guidelines and tools to manage an effective virtual/distance team. Course fee includes morning and afternoon refreshment breaks, lunches, instructional material and tuition. I and my design team designed and developed the course, and I will be the trainer.

Register or learn more at

www.sce-mgmt.uwm.edu

If you want to bring training to you, contact me!

You can also work with  GroupONE Solutions virtual experts directly. Whether you want a speaker, executive briefing, JIT coaching advice (by the hour or by the project), active assistance, or training, we can help. Stay tuned for announcements regarding JIT online training modules coming in 2009 as well.

Other News: Colleague, co-author of The Handbook, and GO-S Virtual Expert, Janet Salmons releases The Handbook of Research on Electronic Collaboration and Organizational Synergy next month. For more information, go to www.info-sci-ref.com, and tell Janet Trina sent you!

If you want to learn a little more about the people part of virtual work, I talked to Rob McNealy of Start-Up Radio about The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams recently.   http://www.startupstoryradio.com/working-virtually-with-trina-hoefling/

Thanks for your continued interest, and know I am interested in what YOU want to hear about and need as well. What do you want to hear more about? I’d love to know!

Or something in between? I’m getting my ducks in a row to do some real world research in organizations, and polling and surveys will be part of that research. It reminds me, though, that I ask people their opinions because I truly not only want – but need – to know in order to do good information gathering. I am also genuinely seeking to learn about them as people and members of the organization, and opportunities to make things better for them while also accomplishing whatever project I’m doing research for.

Interactive. Engagement.Trust building, Relationship building, Alliance building – Expanding Emotional Bandwidth. Oh, yeah – and good information, data and sometimes, wisdom.

Polls and surveys are one tool in my arsenal, but not really enough to sort out what else is really going on inside the organization and the organization’s members and stakeholders. I go in and help the company figure itself out and get better at being who it is more successfully and  responsibly. I can’t do that if I don’t know the people or know what is going on. Polls and surveys are one part of doing that faster and with more safety in reducing bias and letting every voice have a say.

In the media, though, polling is more limited. It is about the only engagement tool that reaches out and pulls information from the American public during this election season. What is its role? Media’s growing requirement is to

• entertain us,
• educate us (not sure where that directive came from, but it is there especially on morning news shows),
• engage us,
• edify our knowledge of current events
• elevate important news so we know to pay attention.

That’s quick off my cuff…. Anyone agree or have another point of view? And what role does polling play, and to what end? [Hint: I'm actually more interested in the "to what end" part. lol]