Exclusive Interview (Part I) with Alex Hiam—author of “Making Horses Drink—How to Lead and Succeed in Business” (Entrepreneur Press, 2002).

Alex Hiam’s horse/employee analogy can best be summed up in this brief excerpt from his book “Making Horses Drink—How to Lead and Succeed in Business”:

“Horses like to win races. It makes them feel good. They respond well to encouragement and praise. The winning trainer knows his or her first task is to make sure the horse feels like a winner. Star performances are produced by stars. Do they feel like stars right now? Without that belief, no horse can run its hardest and no business can achieve its full potential.”

AMA’s Shari Lifland recently spoke to Mr. Hiam about his book and about the state of leadership and employee commitment today. Part I of the interview focuses on how his metaphorical use of the “leading a horse to water” fable relates to a leader’s role and responsibilities to employees. Part II (next month) will present the action steps leaders need to embrace to help their employees—and through them, their organizations—thrive and succeed.

AMA: In the fable you present in the book, a boy who cannot get his horse to drink the water it needs in order to perform well learns the secret to getting horses to drink: that you can’t make them drink; you can only let them drink.

Alex Hiam: Yes, and I freely admit to taking plenty of liberties in writing that story to weave in some important points about how you engage employee initiative most productively. For instance, the boy had to learn to understand his horse’s motivations a bit better before he could break through and solve his problem. At first, he assumed the horse just needed feed and water to be happy. He never imagined it might have a different view of its work. For almost 50 years now, researchers have been publishing studies showing that managers believe employees are motivated first by money. But employees consistently rate factors like open communications, good work to do and good leadership as their main motivators.

Also, the boy at first sees his horse as a bad workhorse because it does not respond to his efforts to coerce it into drinking and working. His style spirals into negative territory—rather like many frustrated managers who feel their employees are driving them to drink. Later, when the boy learns more about his horse—after apologizing to it for his rude behavior—he comes to regard the same horse as a star. He discovers that it is capable of innovating to get the job done in a better way. I love it when I can help a manager make this same flip-flop, either in dealing with an entire group of employees or with a single “problem employee.”

AMA: In the introduction to “You Can Lead a Horse to Water,” you write, “Some days I feel like my own organization runs faster and smarter because I am in the saddle, but other times I worry that I am just adding weight or slowing it down.” What are some of the ways a leader might weigh his business down, and how can he avoid doing so?

Hiam: I’m sorry to say that it’s all too easy to find workplaces where employees are struggling to do a decent job in spite of their managers. A Gallup survey last year revealed that one out of five employees is waiting for information from his or her boss or otherwise lacks what it takes to work productively. If we, as managers, haven’t checked in with each employee recently to see if they need anything in order to be more productive, then that ratio of disengaged employees is going to rise even higher.

I report in the book on one initiative at IBM—it was put together by some people in HR as I recall—where employees were asked a powerful but unusual question: “Is there anything we could do to help you be more productive?” I think the failure to ask this question regularly is going to weigh that proverbial workhorse down, and keep the workforce from being fully productive.

Managers need to give clearer information about performance expectations. Most employees are at least partially guessing about what they need to do and how they should be doing it. I am all for initiative—obviously given the reference to the adage about leading the horse to water and its implication that self-motivation is key. However, I also know that the more structure you can provide (through goals, checklists, quality criteria etc.) the better. Employees often say they don’t know what is expected of them.

AMA: Your book includes ongoing legal commentary by Nancy L. O’Neill, Esq. What are some of the biggest legal mistakes business leaders make?

Hiam: Right now, reading the headlines, of course, we can say that the biggest legal error many managers make is thinking they can (or must) fiddle with their numbers to produce better-looking results for their boss or for the investors. We need to move toward far more transparent reporting in all levels of business. But in the employment area specifically, a lot of so-called experts (such as myself) run around giving nice-sounding advice to managers without warning them of the legal pitfalls. For instance, if you get all fired up about asking employees for their ideas and suggestions, but don’t think about intellectual property issues, you might find that the most valuable idea was developed by an employee at home on a weekend and that their contract says nothing about their ideas belonging to the company.

Perhaps my greatest concern today is that as trainers, consultants and coaches push managers to be more empathetic, “emotionally intelligent,” many of them are taking this advice too literally and pushing their noses into employees’ personal affairs in unwelcome ways. I try to emphasize considerate, personal and genuine communications with employees—but with the focus being their work, not their health or their personal lives. As Nancy points out in the book, there are plenty of times when a manager would really rather not know personal details. If the employee thinks of the manager as a “friend” and is shocked to later be terminated, the result could be a legal claim against that manager. We need to help managers to be empathetic and caring, but also to use progressive discipline, clear performance expectations and goals and good documentation.

AMA: How important are a leader’s personal values to his ability to lead effectively? Is it effective or even right to impose those values on a diverse group of employees?

Hiam: I think it is interesting you raise the issue of imposing the leader’s values on employees. After all, shouldn’t employees have values too? Ideally, everybody arrives at work their first day with a strong set of basic values and we never have to worry about issues of integrity, honesty and responsibility to society. But that may not be the case, so you must impose some core values of honest and caring conduct on your group of people.

The first step is to make it clear (which means simply stated!) that the company’s culture is based on honesty and integrity and does not tolerate unethical or illegal conduct. I think this should be communicated more clearly and convincingly during the initial stages of hiring, to try to get people (including executives) to de-select if they don’t fit the description. It should be part of ongoing performance reviews, and any exceptions to those standards should be documented in the employee’s file, just like any other performance failure. If serious enough (or if minor but chronic), unethical behavior could then be clear grounds for dismissal. That’s basic ethics, and it has to be the bedrock of any civil society and any successful business enterprise.

Beyond that, a leader should give deep thought to what further values are going to be the basis of his or her leadership approach. I recommend (and do in workshops) an exercise in which you draw a star—usually with five points—then label each point with one of the values you think you need to use in order to best achieve the star potential of the group you lead. This method focuses our attention on values that matter most in the current context. Otherwise, you could easily list dozens of values that seem nice and are hard to disagree with. But we are in business to accomplish goals, often in a competitive marketplace, so each business needs to focus on specific values that are of greatest relevance to them right now.

AMA: How has the role of employee and management’s expectations of that employee changed over the past decade or so?

Hiam: The role of the employee has been changing as the business environment has changed. The current work environment requires more of traits like initiative, teamwork, improvisational problem-solving and flexibility. When I do workshops with managers, I always ask them to share the traits they most want to see in employees. We get the sorts of descriptors I just mentioned, whereas 10 or 20 years ago we were much more likely to list things like respectful, obedient, following directions, respecting authority and doing what they are told. Now we view those as just the starting point, and expect employees to go way above and beyond the basics of following instructions. They need to bring their energy, enthusiasm and intelligence to every job.

As for management’s expectations of employees, managers generally do recognize that they need turned-on, self-motivated employees. But they usually set their expectations lower than the ideal because they have been so frequently frustrated in the past. Many managers feel that you simply can’t get good employees any more. And they are right: You can’t get this new employee by using traditional, old styles of management!

AMA: The days of lifetime employment with one company are over. How has this change affected employee commitment? Since employees know that they could be victims of the next downsizing effort, have they lost the ability to feel true company loyalty?

Hiam: Well, the days of lifetime employment are still here in one sector. I still meet “lifers” counting down to vesting their pensions when I do workshops for the federal government. But here’s the thing—I wouldn’t say they have high loyalty or commitment just because they have stable jobs. I think true loyalty has always been the product of special factors working together: a boss you really respect and like working for, a tightly knit group of co-workers with whom you can accomplish great things and challenging, meaningful work that appeals to your need for achievement and your pride. We can just as easily bring those factors to bear and generate high loyalty today as we could have 50 years ago. Turnover is an excuse for lack of loyalty, and a flimsy one at that.

If I wasn’t already working on another book, I think I’d do a new one called “The Loyalty Myth.” I’m tired of hearing managers blame employee disloyalty, when the real problems—and solutions—lie in our management practices themselves.

Member Bonus: Click here to read Alex Hiam’s “Commitment Checklist,” from his book “Making Horses Drink—How to Lead and Succeed in Business.”

For more information about “Making Horses Drink, How to Lead and Succeed in Business” go to www.alexhiam.com or www.streetwisemotivation.com

About Alex Hiam: Hiam is CEO of the corporate training firm Alex Hiam & Associates and the author of a dozen business books, including The Vest Pocket CEO, Marketing for Dummies and Motivating and Rewarding Employees. (He is already working on his next book, Motivational Management, which will detail some of the techniques he covers in his executive workshops. It will be published by AMACOM this fall.)