This is a follow up to my post this past Monday, “Respecting Those Who Serve Our Customers.” In that post, I discussed leadership behaviors that can make employees feel undervalued or “invisible.” The very next day the Wall Street Journal printed an article that focuses on a related subject – “Bad Firings Can Hurt a Firm’s Reputation.” The article discusses the insensitivity with which layoffs and terminations are often handled. Reading some of the examples provided, you can’t help but wonder about the impact on the loyalty and commitment of the company’s remaining employees.

Most of us who have been in leadership roles have either had to fire people or lay people off – or both. The Journal article makes you reflect on how you handled the process. I hope I was much more sensitive than the bosses sited in the article – but it did make me stop and think about what an outside observer might have said having witnessed my handling of those situations.

Check out the article and please comment back to me if you have any of your own examples you’d like to share.

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The CEO letter at the beginning of almost every company’s annual report will include the statement, “Our employees are our most valuable asset.” That is a true statement – our employees are the organization’s most valuable asset. But just saying it isn’t what makes it true. Through their behaviors, leaders must demonstrate that their employees are truly valued.

So, here is a pet peeve. I can’t stand it when leaders refer to their employees as “headcount.” I don’t know for sure, but it’s likely that the term came from the cattle industry. Headcount = how many of head of cattle on the ranch. And even if that’s not where the term comes from; it sounds like it.

As I waited in the audience to present a customer service speech at a company’s annual retreat, I had the opportunity to hear one of the company’s senior executives give the audience a state-of-the-company speech. It was a good talk except for the fact that he kept calling the employees “headcount.” And all of the employees were in the audience to hear it. “We have x number of headcount this year,” “We’re going to have to reduce some headcount next year,” “We’ve got manage our headcount carefully,” etc, etc.

I believe that when we talk about people in a certain way, we start thinking about them in the same way. If we talk about our people as simply headcount, we naturally start thinking about them as numbers. And pretty soon we start treating them as numbers. “Reducing headcount” is simply a sanitized, clinical way of saying, “We’re taking away the livelihood of some of our people.” Circumstances may necessitate a layoff, but I believe the boardroom conversation is quite different when the focus is on how a layoff will impact real people and not simply on how a layoff will improve the “headcount.”

Click here to read an article I wrote titled, “Invisibility.” It discusses some of the leadership behaviors that make employees feel invisible and therefore unvalued.

Think about how invisible, unvalued employees treat customers. Beyond the fact that treating our people well is the right thing to do, it makes good business sense to respect those who serve our customers.

They’re not headcount – they’re people.

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This is the tenth in a series of ten blog posts that provide a brief synopsis of the chapters in my upcoming book, Lessons From the Mouse – A Guide for Applying Disney World’s Secrets of Success to Your Organization, Your Career, and Your Life. You can view previous posts from the book by clicking on the Lessons From the Mouse category on the left column of this page.

Lesson #10: Take Responsibility for Your Own Career.

Walt Disney World is committed to employee development and provides many opportunities for career enrichment or advancement. However, in such a large organization, with over 55,000 cast members, there is a lot of competition when those opportunities come along. It’s easy to get lost in such a vast sea of employees, and many do – often due to their own negligence. Some cast members wait to be discovered, wait to be noticed, wait to be given more responsibility, wait to be promoted, etc. And they grow frustrated when it doesn’t happen.

Other cast members, however, take charge of their own careers. They let their managers know about their goals, they develop new skills, and demonstrate that they can be depended on. They don’t delegate responsibility for their careers to someone else. They see their careers as their own responsibility.

It’s a sad truth that some employees believe good things should just happen without doing what it takes to make them happen. And each time they get passed over for a promotion or assignment, they grow bitter and begin a downward spiral into a victim mentality; which eventually dooms any chance for future opportunities. On the other hand, companies and bosses love employees who take charge of their own careers. Responsible, self-starters are a welcome relief from the whiners.

There’s an old saying that there are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened. People who make things happen will always be in demand.

Questions to consider about Lesson #10:

1. What opportunities have you asked for lately at work?
2. What specifically have you done recently to gain new knowledge or skills in order to increase your value to your organization?
3. What can you do to take more responsibility for your career?

To be released this summer

Tags: Commentary, Lessons From the Mouse, Tips for Better Customer Service by Dennis Snow
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