7. Make up your own sentences using the words and word combinations given below.

Transparency, a hefty premium, to recruit outside talent, to be challenging, to open up payrolls, to cap salaries, to justify wage levels, to brag, to involve chatter.

8. In groups discuss the following.

Many managers do not seem to have mastered the art of praising their employees so that workers feel their accomplishments are recognized. So in the 1980s the book called The One Minute Manager appeared. It described how to create a feeling of achievement, responsibility, growth, and recognition among employees. Here is what the book said.

The way to praise employees such that they feel recognized is:

• Tell employees ahead of time that you are going to let them know how they are doing (good or bad).

• Praise employees immediately (look for a good thing to say).

• Tell them specifically what they did right.

• Tell them how good you feel about what they did and how it helps the organization.

• Encourage them to do more of the same.

• Shake hands or touch employees to show your support.

The way to instill feelings of achievement, responsibility, and growth is to encourage employees to:

• Agree on some specific goals.

• Write out the goals in less than 250 words.

• Read the goals carefully.

• Take a minute periodically to review results as compared to goals.

Decision Questions

1. How would you feel if at least once a day you were given one of praise for something you were doing well? Does that help explain the popularity of the book? Would it motivate you?

2. All of the book is really common sense. Why would mangers pay to read what they already know intuitively? Is one thing to know, another to do?

3. How will you react to one-minute reprimand?

4. What is your reaction to the idea of touching employees whenever you praise or reprimand them to show the support?

FINANCIAL TIMES OCTOBER 29 2004

Contrite executives play the blame and shame game

CEOs now atone for their companies' faults openly, writes Morgen Witzel. But in some countries, humiliation is demanded too

What skills are required for success in public life? One that seems to be growing in importance is the art of expressing shame. Earlier this week, Charles Prince, chief executive of Citigroup, became the latest business leader to make a formal public apology, following an investigation by the Financial Services Agency, the banking regulator, into a failure of internal controls in Citibank's Japanese business. The photographs of Mr Prince and Douglas Peterson, Citibank Japan CEO, bowing their heads in contrition were published widely. It is not only business leaders who have to make public apologies, of course. But while football coaches and Olympic athletes must atone only for their own misdemeanours, the position of the CEO is quite different: he or she is held personally responsible for the failings of any part of the company, and this creates something of a paradox.

Modern management thinking urges companies to decentralise authority and flatten hierarchies. As a result, and thanks to the size and scale of most global corporations, it is impossible for the CEO to know what each employee is doing at all times and whether their actions conform to legal and moral standards.

Yet, when things fall apart, the CEO must take the consequences. It is not enough for the company to pay damages or make reparations. Society demands that those in charge must be publicly shamed in order for justice to be seen to be done.

The acceptable forms in which shame is publicly displayed vary from place to place, and it is here that CEOs must be aware of cultural nuances.

Moral philosophers sometimes distinguish between “guilt cultures” and “blame cultures.” In the former, wrongdoers are considered guilty of crimes and are punished by society through institutions such as the courts. In the latter, they realise their own failings and punish themselves. True shame, says John Skorupski, a professor at St Andrews University, requires the culprits to be aware of their own failings and to lose face in their own eyes as well as in the eyes of others. Both guilt and blame cultures seek to engender shame but they do it in different ways. In Japan, a blame culture, public apologies like that of Mr Prince are seen as vital in expressing shame. Particularly important is the bow, which expresses not only the admission of guilt and repentance for past misdeeds, but also submission to the will of authority.

In the US, where a guilt culture prevails, shame is more commonly inflicted by others rather than publicly acknowledged. When Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron, was taken to court, he was required to walk handcuffed for the final few hundred yards to the courthouse, in full public view. All could see how he had been stripped of authority and, quite literally, rendered powerless.

Sometimes America does demand public apologies, but these are not always delivered. Following her conviction on corruption charges, Martha Stewart, for instance, apologised to her employees for any suffering her actions may have caused them – but not for the actions themselves.

Part of the problem with apologies in guilt cultures is that they do not really satisfy the culture’s needs. In blame cultures, by acknowledging wrong, the culprit seeks forgiveness from those he or she has wronged. This is very different from guilt cultures, where the aim is condign punishment. In the aftermath of the Martha Stewart trial, an article in The Washington Post expressed scepticism about the value of public apologies: “Does anyone really imagine forgiveness is the endgame?”

In Britain, the guilt culture has a long history. Following the collapse of the South Sea Bubble in the 1720s, the directors of the South Sea Company were publicly pilloried by dozens of pamphlet writers. "Carri-on-eating dogs” and “villainous harlots” were some of the more colourful epithets hurled at them. In contrast, recent prosecutions for corporate manslaughter seem rather dull.

But the blame culture is strong too, and there is a growing trend to force a public declaration of shame from wrongdoers. In 2001, following fatal rail accidents at Potter”s Bar and Hatfield in the UK, John Robinson, chairman of Railtrack, the rail operating company, apologised publicly and vowed to put matters right. Interviews with the families of the victims showed that they placed great store by such gestures, claiming to be less interested in punishing the company than in seeing it admit to and atone for its wrongs. For some of these people, at least, forgiveness was indeed the endgame.

For the modern CEO, knowing how to express shame and contrition has become a valuable skill. By all accounts, Mr Prince’s public display in Japan was a success, and has gone some way to restoring his company's reputation. As CEOs continue to be called to public account for the wrongdoings of their companies, we can expect to see many more such displays in future.