....when you put them on you can look at old challenges and find new solutions...

KindExcellence is made up of eight skills used as lenses to examine managerial challenges:

• Receptiveness-- learning to listen, process ideas and speak from an open, non-judgmental or neutral place

• Seeing things as they truly are-- staying aware of one's limitations, staying aware of the system's limitations, avoiding generalizations, getting feedback etc. (seeing things as they truly are depends on receptiveness)

• Core analysis-- identifying the root cause of challenges

• Studying the operational codex of the system-- identifying the basic assumptions and "guidelines" leading the system to prefer one choice over another

• Local optimization vs. global optimization-- examining the priorities of resolving urgent needs of the "here and now" vs. developing growth and putting in place structures eliminating the needs of the "here and now" later in the future

• Analysis vs. synthesis-- analysis, a linear thinking process based in the conscious mind and synthesis, an intuitive, holistic thinking process based in the subconscious mind are two very different thinking skills. There are techniques to enhance either one and there are situations in which one is more effective than the other. Here the focus is on learning to master both and identifying when you use one or the other.

• Moving from giving instructions to providing core skills-- in effect, learning how to provide one or more of the above principles instead of giving mandates or directions.

• The eighth skill is kindness-- associated with: honesty, respect, self-esteem, warmth, humility, forgiveness, patience, joy, and generosity. It is a balanced state of caring for others and caring for oneself with actions and choices stemming from the best of intentions for the wellbeing of everyone involved. Kindness does not come from negative feelings like anger or fear; it is a quality of being genuine and it resonates with authentic giving.

KindExcellence addresses two leading management challenges:

• increasing employee performances
• commitment

Performance challenges:

• low innovation, curiosity and creativity
• high dependability on instructions (micromanagement combined with lack of self management)
• great resistance of employees to change
• dysfunctional communication patterns (giving and receiving feedback)
• ineffective and inefficient use of time and resources

Commitment challenges:

• high turnover
• low employee engagement (employees not doing their best)
• festering unresolved conflicts
• lack of trust
• manipulative communication patterns

The KindExcellence model allows managers to win the benefits of both kindness and business excellence without having to give up on one to achieve the other.

We work with businesses facing high turnover, great resistance of employees to change, the results of dysfunctional communication patterns, low employee engagement, and other commitment or performances issues.

Our clients enjoy an ability to tap into attracting top talent through employee word of mouth. They learn to develop teams that are engaged, employees that continuously improve and a stable business that depends on reduced voluntary turnover and a large pool of in house management succession options. KindExcellence has shown to increase innovation, time management, employee accountability, acquisition of new skills, conflict resolution, and much more.

Going back in time I want to take you to when things were getting so bad that it felt like the entire future of the company depended on the skills of a single man-- a new manager hired into his position only three months before I met him.

This department he headed, the section responsible for testing, debugging and fixing the multimillion dollar scanning machines the company produced, had the largest collection of professional experts in the entire organization. Some of these experts were the best in the world in their particular field. These guys were responsible for preventing multibillion-dollar mistakes, deal breakers and lawsuits.

The CEO of this corporation realized something had to be done when the #1 expert of the department announced he was interested in leaving. This CEO also knew costs of such a loss, in terms of knowledge and training (not to mention a complete breakdown of staff morale) would cost the business a grave price.

Let me now take you further back in time to about three months before I was called in. Chaos ruled there.

The existing manager did not have the respect of his team. All of his instructions were regarded as unfair and a clear separation between management and staff was in place. Team members in the department are referring to management as "they," clearly setting themselves apart from the "clueless" bunch at the top.

The team was divided into groups, with friction around disagreements everywhere. And as management put forth a new incentive, inner competition between the groups emerged. Soon some team members reported they were working-- when they are not (just to win the competition and collect the incentive) plus other phenomena, like working hard when a supervisor was around and reducing productivity to almost a standstill when no one was watching occurred.

The department's good employees were just playing the game, but the top experts, those who could easily find a new job, were starting to ask themselves, "Why stay"?

Conflict, dishonest behavior and a total disconnect to management were starting to weigh more heavily than many years of loyalty, and commitment was falling apart.

This turmoil was what the new manager stepped into. He had to solve it and fast but he had a tightrope to walk: He had to gain the respect of his team, and put an end to the existing conflicts and manipulations. He had to avoid taking sides to bridge the gap between management and staff.

After we explored the possibilities together he chose to make a few brave and radical changes:

First he announced to the team that from this day on: "I am bringing in total transparency." This meant he had to be completely honest about everything -- no politics, no hidden agenda, and no talking to certain team members about complaints uttered behind closed doors. Everything was now on the table for everyone to see.

Practicing transparency is never easy. It means owning up to limitations, becoming extremely vulnerable to manipulation, requiring great strength setting boundaries and much more. But we went through it.

Then he placed the future of the department in the hands of mutual decisions where all would debate the most important ways to move forward, and the biggest challenges facing the department.

To do that he had to learn how to train his team of professional experts to think using a new set of skills: he needed to teach them how to analyze and how to synthesize. To do that, he needed quickly to master those skills himself and a third skill – how to teach thinking skills to others.

Disagreements were dealt with as challenges, where employees in disagreement had to process all information available to the manager, putting themselves in his position, offering a better solution. Nothing less was accepted.

He worked with the group to set a challenging yet realistic goal, working with all team members individually on a weekly basis, to assess where they were in respect to their goals, teaching them new and powerful thinking skills of analysis and synthesis.

The underlining principles were:

• Being genuine, honest, empathic, patient, loyal, and generous - starting with the manager and demanding it from everyone on the team. Anything else would be brought up for discussion.
• Devoting time to give team members training through two thinking skills: analysis and synthesis - showing them how to use it to look at challenges on all levels. Initially honesty among most team members was a result of having no other option. With the constant meetings talking to all team members and with a blunt demand for complete transparency, the new manager was able to see everything.

But somewhere deep inside, employees could sense (like we sense when someone loves us or hates us) while collecting signs and adding clues, that the manager was genuine about his desire to change things for the better. Within a mere two weeks nearly all of them wanted to be honest and build a new work environment for themselves.

They started feeling closer to each other, and as productivity went up with their newly acquired skills of analysis and synthesis, they started taking pride in the changes they were making. In a month, conflicts and distrust were replaced by constructive feedback, and within two months not one on the team would make a critical decision before running it by other people-- especially those who were most likely to be the biggest opposition.

Because of open discussion of the hope for change, the department's top expert decided to stay, and this department's turnover came to a complete standstill.

I checked in with this team a year later to find a few more interesting results:

Because of the trust levels and the safety surrounding feedback, innovation now blossomed. Employees were happy and reported they look forward to come to work, that they are more motivated now (even without monetary incentives) and that they would never consider moving to a new organization for as long as they could imagine. They have bonded and productivity went sky high.

The manager had a very similar reaction. Without needing to work through constant conflicts and other dysfunctional behaviors he now had time to strategize and plan for the department's growth. He found his team was working like a well-oiled machine and he kept meeting with individual team members on a monthly basis, setting monthly goals around tasks and personal growth and "thinking through" challenges-- together fine tuning their analysis and synthesis thinking skills.

He found that people on his team were more alert to threats and opportunities, that they would come forth and alert him if a task was not going to be accomplished on time, providing him with the opportunity to do something about it. In essence, all he did was provide a safe, nurturing, and healthy environment-- combined with top business skills training-- and it almost felt like his team was managing itself.