What can we do? One of our employees is not at all productive, but his manager refuses to terminate him. That's because the employee has a terminal illness. The manager speaks to the employee about his poor performance and not following instructions, but that is far as it goes. At what point should HR intervene and press for termination?—Marilyn

Have you ever felt like you were being watched? I’m not trying to induce panicked paranoia here, but if you’re a leader you should be feeling that way. The more senior a leader you are, the more you’re being watched. You need to pick up what I call a big footprint view of your role because, as a leader, your actions have a much bigger impact than you may realize.

That’s a lesson that Linda Hudson learned when she became a business unit president at General Dynamics back in the 1990’s. Hudson, who is now the president of the land and armaments group at BAE Systems, described her first few days as a BU president at General Dynamics in a “Corner Office” Q&A in Sunday’s New York Times. Wanting to make a good impression in her new role, Hudson picked up some new suits at Nordstrom’s and, as part of her ensemble, learned some interesting ways to tie a scarf to complement her suits. She showed up as president on day one looking really sharp. The surprise came on day two when, as she described to the Times, she ran “into no fewer than a dozen women in the organization who have on scarves tied exactly like mine.”

When you’re the leader, people take their cues from you. When you’re aware of it, this can work for everyone’s benefit. If you aren’t aware of your footprint or ignore its impact, you can quickly set yourself and the organization up for failure.

So, with your leadership success in mind, here are five tips for how to successfully live with a big leadership footprint:

Question: “What steps are you taking to advise your employees about the upcoming flu season?  Are you  handing out policies or a general flier urging hand washing or staying home when ill? — Dl

Question: “I work in health care, and our employer is forcing us to get the flu shot, even those who do not have patient contact.  If we refuse, we could be terminated.  The only exception is those people who cannot get the flu shot for medical reasons.  Is this legal?” — Anonymous

So, perhaps even a better question would revolve around “economic indicators” that we can plainly see which will indicate the recession is over from a practical, not technical, perspective.

There’s been a lot written in the past few weeks about the demise of humility in our culture.  Fortunately, we still have some great examples of successful leaders who demonstrate humility. One of those is the Super Bowl winning former coach of the Indianapolis Colts, Tony Dungy.

I’ve admired Tony Dungy for a long time because of his capacity to succeed in the high stakes competitive environment of the NFL while maintaining grace and humility whether he’s won or lost. Since I’m a huge football fan and Dungy is on the broadcast crew for NBC’s Football Night in America this year, he has been on my radar screen a little more than usual these past few weeks.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has been in place for almost 20 years and was expanded this year to create even broader protections. If employees know their rights, and courts know them too, why don’t employers? Let’s see how a talk show ended up in the middle of a big courtroom drama …

Earlier this week, I was talking with an executive who’s recently been promoted to run a business unit that earlier this decade was generating a few million dollars a year in revenue and this year will gross a few hundred million dollars. Through acquisitions and organic growth, the business could be twice its current size in a few more years. As we were talking about the changes she might have to make in her leadership style as the business grows, I remembered a conversation I had last year with another executive who was facing the same sort of situation.

Question: “I have been fired from almost every job I have ever had. My friend says I’m just unlucky, because I seem to wind up in impossible situations that I can’t escape. I know that difficult people are everywhere, but I guess I haven’t learned how to properly navigate around the worst ones. I’ve tried the fight-back approach and the just-deal-with-it approach, but neither seems to work. Last time, I made a pre-emptive strike by complaining to human resources, but I still wound up on the losing end of the stick. I have been fired from five jobs in seven years. What would you recommend for someone like me?” — Nathan

We have to lay off several employees. Some have only been with us a couple of years, but one has worked here for 13 years. We want to treat them right by providing severance pay, but I don't know how much is appropriate. Those of you who have been in this situation, how much severance did you offer?—Jason, Ga.

Like most industries, the business loan alternative industry has continued to mature and offer different financing potions that are less expensive and have different requirements for the borrower.  

One thing I’ve learned in my years as an executive coach is that you can’t convince a leader who is heavily focused on results to work on relationship building skills just because it’s the “right thing” or a “nice thing” to do.  To motivate the client to change, you have to make a direct connection as to how stronger relationship skills will support the client in getting the results they’re looking for. The results oriented leader usually needs evidence of how relationships can help him achieve what he wants to achieve.

So, it was with great interest that I read David Rock’s article, “Managing with the Brain in Mind,” in the latest issue of Booz and Company’s Strategy + Business magazine.  Rock is an executive coach specializing in the connections between neuroscience and leadership. He is the author of Quiet Leadership and the forthcoming book, Your Brain at Work. In his S+B article, Rock opens with the story of recent MRI based research that demonstrates that people who feel rejected or treated unfairly activate the same regions of their brain as people who are taking a literal blow to the head. The brain’s responses to relational and physical attacks are quite similar.

Rock quotes a neuroscientist who says the link between social discomfort and physical pain makes sense  “because, to a mammal, being socially connected to caregivers is necessary for survival.”  In an economic environment where people are naturally worried about the future, this strikes me as a very important thing for leaders to pay attention to. Rock offers a helpful acronym, SCARF (which stands for Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness), which can help leaders better understand and act on the relationship factors that people naturally need to have addressed.  He outlines a number of ideas in his article about how to act on these needs. Building on Rock’s model, I’ll offer a few of my own here:

My boss wants me to spend a good chunk of money on something that I think is unnecessary during a time when our department is being watched for excessive expenditures. I'm the one who buys everything and has the credit card. But I want to make sure this purchase doesn't come back on me. Is there a protocol or common form that I could have him sign to show that he's responsible?  -- Linda

I have a new boss and she is so unorganized. She has piles and piles of papers and complains that she can never find anything. How do I get her to organize her desk? -- J

No, I’m not talking about some schlocky movie that didn’t make it into theatres this summer.  I’m talking about Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo Senior Vice President who was hired this week to be a key part of the leadership team charged with spinning AOL out of Time Warner over the next year. For fans of memorable business communication, Garlinghouse is best known as the author, in 2006, of a memo to the top executives at Yahoo that came to be known as “the peanut butter manifesto.” 

Among other points in the manifesto, Garlinghouse wrote:

“I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

I hate peanut butter. We all should”

His memo, which was eventually featured in a front page article in the Wall Street Journal, was a clarion call for Yahoo to get its act together and recapture its leadership position in the Internet space. That hasn’t happened yet (and may never happen), but the memo set off a chain of events which led to a change in top leadership and the implementation of many of the strategies that Garlinghouse wrote about.

So, as Garlinghouse joins AOL to help lead what is a combination of a turnaround and a start-up, I thought it was worth taking a look at the peanut butter manifesto to see what we can learn about how leaders can influence their bosses through highly effective communications. Here are a few takeaways:

Question: Our HR manager recently told me that my bosses had complained about my coming in late.  I am a secretary to three attorneys in a large law firm. Since I frequently work after hours without overtime pay, I assumed that arriving late was no problem. When I apologized to the attorneys, they said the HR manager brought up the subject. The attorneys thanked me for working in the evenings.  I have told the HR manager that I don’t appreciate her misrepresenting the situation. I would like an unbiased third party to mediate this tardiness issue, but a friend says that bringing up overtime would create big problems. What should I do?”  Angry with HR

I have a manager who isn’t breaking any policies, but bends the rules regarding his own work schedule. Our managers are required to work 38 hours a week, but do have the flexibility to set their own schedules. This particular manager works his 38 hours, but does so in a four-day workweek instead of a five-day workweek. I’m getting concerning phones calls from his staff. I’m also worried that this sends a mixed message to employees and other managers. Please advise.—Yvonne, Fla.

They've got money so there is more attraction to effective than free for most business owners.

We've all been there before - face-to-face with a prospect who demands to know the "bottom line" up front...

Question: “The Gregg Reference Manual says to use a comma to set off abbreviations that follow a person’s name, such as “Jane Doe, CPS.”  I recently proofed a newsletter where some names did not have commas.  When I brought this to the attention of the person submitting the information, she said that other newsletters didn’t use commas. Has this grammar rule changed or are people just getting it wrong.  Should you still use the comma?” — Diana

Question: “An employee placed a recorder in a meeting but none of the participants were aware that she was recording the session. She later confessed to me that she recorded it. What should I do?”  — Amanda
 

You’re required to offer job accommodations to employees with qualifying disabilities. But if an employee has a medical condition that requires frequent bathroom breaks, does that count as a “disability”? The answer is a clear “yes," especially this year …

Now that the Cash for Clunkers program is over, the results are coming in and it looks like the big winners from the program are Hyundai and Ford with year over year monthly sales increases of 47% and 17% respectively. The number three selling new car during the Clunkers program was the Ford Focus with the Ford Escape showing up in the top 10 as well. The other two American car companies actually showed declines in sales during August with GM down almost 20% from last year and Chrysler sales down 15%.

What’s the difference between the three U.S. auto makers? Obviously, there are a lot of factors, but I’d argue the most important is leadership.  As I wrote in this blog back in August of 2007, my money was on Ford CEO Alan Mulally to lead a turnaround at Ford and it looks like that’s what he’s doing. I spent some time earlier today reading some recent articles about Mulally and watching some video interviews with him to try to determine what he’s done right since arriving at Ford from the Boeing Corporation in 2006.  (My sources include articles in Fortune magazine, Business Week, and the U.K. Guardian along with video interviews from Time magazine and the New Yorker

Based on that research, here are five Mulally success factors I’ve come up with that I think apply to any leader charged with leading a turnaround in their organization.

Question:  “I work for a manager who thinks I can read her mind. She will come rushing up to my desk and say something like, “Did he come pick it up?”  Because I have no idea what she’s talking about, I ask what she means. Then she looks at me like I’m an idiot for not understanding. This happens all the time, and I’m starting to get really irritated. How do I deal with her weird communication pattern?” —  Not a Mind Reader

We're reviewing tons of applications for the few positions we're seeking to fill. What's the best practice for notifying applicants who aren't hired? How do other employers do it?—Sylvia, NYC