Often leaders struggle with providing feedback on performance. This centers around two things; one, usually feedback takes place when performance is not where it should be. Two, the prospect of providing feedback around poor performance is wrought with the potential for high emotion. We, don’t like getting that kind of feedback and as such the fear of giving it to someone else can prevent us from acting in a timely manner. There is a way though, to remove much of the "emotion" from the equation.
Linkage This is where metrics enter into this discussion. I have worked with many companies who do an excellent job of establishing company goals, department and group goals and kpi’s but then it stops there. The department or group will have their own dashboards or displays set up for the team to have a strong visual for how they are doing. This is all good. The missing link is what are the metrics for “each” group member and are they being tracked? This is key for a number of reasons. Engagement The first is engagement. Gallup reports that teams that have a clear set of goals for each member have double the rate of engagement of teams that don’t. Typically, this can translate into a 10 – 20 percent increase on the bottom line. Clarity More importantly teams where each member is tracking their own metrics (that they have developed) are much more agile in dealing with performance and spotting opportunities. It also provides clarity for each team member in terms of what is expected of them and it provides that key linkage between what they do and how that advances the team or company objectives. A Tale of Two Scenarios A typical scenario is a leader sits down with members on their team on a quarterly or bi-annual basis to review kpi’s established from the last review. Often, if we are honest about it, we have to remind ourselves what those kpi’s were for that staff member before the meeting and we have to rack our memories to try and determine how they rank. For teams that are tracking individual measures on a daily basis the scenario looks more like this. The leader may walk by a desk or work station and look at someone’s charting of their measures. You can note the progress or successes and provide immediate recognition. I have found that when these measures are discussed on a daily basis you don’t have to say much if anything, that person will “want” to tell you how things are going. Particularly if you have made it safe for them to do so. Taking Emotion Out of the Equation These daily interactions provide you as a leader more agility to provide “course corrections” thus helping that team member avoid potential issues. What’s more is that everyone knows what the measures are and are comfortable engaging in discussions around them. This is one of the biggest values of leading by the numbers. You take away the emotional stigma and are able to engage in a much more collaborative discussion around performance. If you think about these two scenario’s which sounds more appealing? Are your team members collecting and tracking daily measures? Can you see how much easier it is to provide feedback when the emotion is taken out of the equation? Performance Leadership – Think About It! Fear Starts - On the Inside
In the field of Narrative Psychology we are beginning to discover just how powerful our "stories" are. We have all heard the accounts of primitive tribes where stealing was considered taboo, so much so that the thief would have the hand that they stole with wither up and atrophy. We all marvel at accounts like this that speak to our susceptibility to the power of suggestion. Most of us scoff at the thought or dismiss it as something that afflicts those with a weaker constitution than ours. Yet we are now discovering the impact of the power of suggestion and in particular how powerful it is when we are writing that narrative or suggestion. So many of our actions (or inactions) can only be understood when we confront the stories we tell ourselves - about ourselves. When we examine our "self talk" it is there that we can begin to uncover the origins of the fears that we grapple with. Our Story The biggest story we write is our story. We create narratives and context, heroes and villains, and arrange the events of our existence into some kind of coherent context. This serves to give our lives structure and underscores and reinforces the essential truths that we have created about ourselves. And these are broad landscapes indeed with family legends passed down from grandparents, parents and relatives. Stories such as "the women in our family have always been healers" and these traits are woven together with personal history "I have a real gift of helping the sick and volunteer time at the local hospital" and thus they become part of an elaborate story that we create of our lives. Impact On Identity Sometimes the events of our lives take on mythical proportions which is not to suggest that we are lying or deluded but we construct our stories to reinforce what we choose as the high (or low) points of our personal identity. "I was a tomboy and I climbed a 1000 trees and beat up a hundred boys when I was young!" We even make fun of those narratives such as the standard "When I was your age I walked ten miles to school, in bare feet, uphill, both ways!" It is in this part of our "story" that things can get really interesting. We create both positive and negative qualities for our main character - us. Most of us will have a mix of both but some folks will be much more positive than negative and some will tend to lean toward the negative side of things. These features of our character will be shaped by the stories of others in our lives such as our parents and family and the messaging that they insert into our story. These also can be both positive or negative. In their excellent narrative on this issue John and Stasi Eldridge in their research speak to the role of our parents and in particular our father with respect to the messaging they speak into our lives and its impact. We do (and will) however, add a lot of our own narrative and most of this will happen without us even realizing it. Redemptive or Contaminating Our stories tend to fall into either redemptive (overcoming an obstacle and succeeding) or contaminating (once everything was perfect and then "something" happened that changed all of that) genres. In redemptive stories our protagonist (us) is heroic and dynamic. In contaminant stories our protagonist (us) is more passive and leans toward being a victim. What is Your Story? Our stories are very powerful indeed and we filter everything through our self written narrative. So my question for you today is this: "What is your story?" Are you a hero or victim? Is your story redemptive or contaminating? These are important questions to consider not only for personal reasons but also because of the impact that your story can have in your work and career. What do you expect for yourself at work and why? Good things or bad? Do you deserve that promotion or not? Your personal narrative, as it touches on those deep seated fears, will be at play in how you answer these types of questions. Take time today to exam your story and what it says about you. Does your story hold you captive or set you free? By the way; in case you aren't happy with how you see your story remember this; the last chapters are still waiting to be written and you are able to change that narrative any time you decide you need to. Performance Leadership - Think About It! I wonder how many will look at this title and think to themselves “I don’t want to admit that I am afraid of anything." If you are in leadership or moving into leadership, like all of us, it is a question you will grapple with. But like so many other things in our society there is an expectation of control and confidence, so we push that question down, deep into our psyche. We have come to believe that leadership should unpack quickly like everything else in our society. The reality is that growth as a leader comes in baby steps and becoming comfortable with this question is the first step to becoming the awesome leader you want to be.
Dealing with Doubt The reality is that overnight successes are rarely that. They are the culmination of years of hard work, trial and error and most of all perseverance. The truth is that many of us are not comfortable leaders. We suffer from “imposter syndrome,” that nagging doubt that we are only playing the role of leaders and that if people really examined our leadership closely they would know we are frauds. We focus only on the things we feel confident about and so often what that means is we can generate awesome reports or studies, manage the paperwork and so on but struggle internally to master the "soft" skills around managing the performance of the people on our teams. Different Strokes for Different Folks And The Masks We Wear Some folks will compensate for these feelings through bluster and bragging. Some (many) will compensate by using promotion as a means to distance oneself from dealing with staff and becoming “paper busy.” (I have seen supervisors who are just a door down from an Operations Center who never set foot in that room.) And some will try one approach or another looking for ways to find balance in their leadership. Whatever the case may be, comfortable with their leadership, many people are not. And we hide behind masks when we are not. A New Skill Set To be fair it is not your fault. We live in a digital era that is governed by industrial revolution era leadership models. What does this mean? Companies are set up to bring people in because of their technical skills and when they reach the top of their pay band or grade the only option left to giving them a raise is to promote them into leadership. The net result is someone gets moved from a place of technical expertise to a position requiring an entirely different set of skills, leadership skills. How Do We Prepare Leaders? Typically, the only training or preparation for this role is the example set by the person who previously held that position. (Let that sink in for a minute.) Many companies spend a lot of time working on issues around succession planning at the C – Suite and Executive leadership levels yet give little thought to similar processes for leadership at other levels. It is true too that companies now have started utilizing leadership training programs to help in this process yet fail to connect the program with the objectives of the company and the actual needs of its leaders. For many it is a prerequisite to take a leadership course as part of moving into leadership but these courses are often only an HR version of “pencil whipping,” a checklist to say that it has been complied with. Confronting Our Fears How much thought has gone into helping that new leader understand the company goals and objectives? Or how many get training on dealing with that difficult employee (and we all have them) who will rob them of time and energy? Do they show them how to know they have had a good day or that their team has had a good day? Have they received grounding in knowing the core components of leadership? Or, have they been shown how to confront those aspects of leadership that they are afraid of? These are the things we are going to explore for the next while on to how to become an amazing leader by confronting those fears. These tools are not new or necessarily unique but they are effective. Performance Leadership – Think About It! A Loss At Christmas
It's been a bit of a rough Christmas and New Year at our house. My mother in-law, Bev, passed away right before Christmas. She lived with us (we used to joke we were room mates) and she had been more of a mother to me than a mother in-law. Bev had been a nurse and a pastors wife for many years and after her beloved Grant passed away we got to spend more time together. I had come to value spending that time with her, taking her shopping or to doctor's appointments, and of course the conversations we had during all that time driving! It was just this last weekend as we were going through her things that my wife found Bev's Christmas gifts to us. Just simple gift cards tucked into a Christmas card along with some thoughts and well wishes from her. I opened mine not quite knowing what to find. What I read stopped me in my tracks and yes, I wept. She had written, To James, from your mother (?) Bev. Thanks so much. The Power of a Question Mark It was the question mark behind mother that had caught my eye and choked me up. Didn't she know how I had felt about her? Hadn't I told her enough times how she was like a mother to me and how much that meant? One little question mark, yet it carried so much meaning. What Do We Leave Unanswered? It got me wondering if we as leaders have question marks floating around our teams? It is our responsibility to ensure that our teams know; their role, their contribution, their value, and their purpose. We help ensure that the work our teams do feed their purpose and skills and we are constantly interpreting the needs of the company to the team and the needs of the team to the company. In all the rush and tyranny of the urgent is it possible that questions around worth, value, and contribution go unanswered? You KNOW the answer to that! Of course it is! Commit to Making Sure So as we move into 2019 let this serve as a reminder to us as leaders to never leave a question mark with our teams with respect to the basic needs that we all have. Gallup and many other research groups have confirmed many times over that people don't leave companies, they leave managers. And they leave managers because often they don't get those questions answered; what is my role, value, or contribution to the team? Will you support me in my growth, aspirations or simply as a human being? In short, do "I" really count? (Or as Bev reminded me, have I really filled that role in your life?) Don't let there be any level of uncertainty in your mind or on your team with regard to the answers to those issues. Unanswered questions or what I call floating question marks can be deadly to team and company performance if they are not dealt with. Performance Leadership - Think About It! Every Christmas I wait expectantly to see what new and novel way WestJet employees create something special for this time of year. This last year they did not disappoint. In case you missed it they did "The 12 Flights of Christmas" by working with children from the Boys and Girls Club to make their perfect Christmas dream come true.
Each Year Different For at least the last four years the staff at this airline have picked unique and heartwarming ways to say thank you and to show kindness. Their "Santa Surprise" garnered literally hundreds of millions of hits on their web site and was covered by news and TV shows around the world. How Do You Drive Engagement? Why do I bring this up you ask? Because WestJet prides itself on employee engagement. They use the catch phrase "every employee is also an owner!" The idea being that if every employee took ownership of the business they worked for everyone would go above and beyond the call of duty to ensure its success. It is what we call discretionary effort. Discretionary Effort What would your business or group look like if everyone on it demonstrated this kind of discretionary effort? How much easier would it be to lead a group like this? The goal of great leadership is, in fact, to do exactly that - get your team to operate in that realm of discretionary effort. Allow For Ownership Giving your team the opportunity to provide input, letting them know where they stand with you and the competition, providing a voice for those closest to the action to enact improvements and recognizing those behaviours are all ways that you can ramp up your employee engagement and discretionary effort. Involvement leads to commitment and commitment leads to ownership. Your business may not be a WestJet yet or your group may not seem that significant but give your staff some room to spread their wings and let them surprise you. What would your business look like with that level of engagement? Performance Leadership - Think About It! Oh, and don't forget to watch out for what they do this year! Disrupters are changes in technology, process or knowledge that fundamentally change the nature of an industry. The iPhone is a good example of a disruptive technology. The use of "big data" is very much a disrupter in the knowledge realm and has far reaching implications for every industry sector. To a lesser degree changes in approaches to process improvement like LEAN or Operational Excellence or Behavioural Based Process Improvement are also disrupters.
Why Are Disrupters Important? Having established what a disrupter is the next question is why is this important? Ask PALM or perhaps Blackberry. Ask Atari or Commodore. These are all examples of companies that have suffered as a result of not recognizing disrupters and for not fostering a disruptive technology drive of there own. Disrupters change industry and companies within that industry that do not recognize the disruption early enough to adapt, disappear. For a current example, many feel that Apple is now struggling with staying out front with regard to introducing the next major disrupter. Obscure Beginnings It is the nature of a disrupter to come from a place of obscurity and move to a place of dominance in relatively short order. Current companies are now trying to incubate disruptive technology, processes or knowledge as a means of staying ahead of the competition. This is where operational excellence comes in. If you can create an environment where every member of the organization is invested in looking for improvements, savings or better client experience you run a better chance of incubating a disrupter. Everyone Can Play One company took the approach that those closest to the action are best able to identify the opportunities so created a culture that encouraged input from front line workers. In one instance a worker shared some information regarding how to get more production from a well with what was a very simple approach. The net result was that for the next year rather than having a field with declining production it actually swung to an up curve and increased production. It added a million dollars a month to the bottom line for that field and extended its lifespan considerably. Do You Incubate Disrupters? You may say that that wasn't really a major disrupter and you would be right. Remember the grand daddy of the iPhone was the iPod. Small disrupters lead to bigger disrupters which in turn change entire industries. The point is if your don't foster operational excellence and start the process of incubating for these things to happen you may well wind up in the same place as PALM or Commodore. The next big disruptive breakthrough could be residing on your team. Performance Leadership - Think About It! I have written on this issue before but I ran across an excellent article the McKinsey Quarterly from 2014 by Pierre Gurdjian, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin Lane which perfectly summarizes my basic argument.
I am going to include the link below but the for those of you who don't have the time to read the article their premise is argued through four principles; First, -the training does not match the "context" of where the leaders are. Principles and concepts are not tied to the issues that these leaders face in their company, day to day. Second, and very closely related, most training "decouples" reflection on the things being taught from the real work confronting trainees. Third, they underestimate or ignore the mindsets that create barriers toward effective leadership - in short they avoid the painful discussions around behaviours and the assumptions that go with them found in most companies. Fourth and lastly, they fail to measure results. Often leadership development programs hesitate to "go there" as there is an underlying fear that measures around results will reflect poorly on the program - and they would be right. I will leave you to read the article and if you are interested in finding out how a Certificate in Performance Leadership actually addresses each of these areas then don't hesitate to reach out. Performance Leadership - Think About It! Take me to the article. I know that the standard practice today is to manage budgets and bottom lines through the contraction or expansion of staffing levels. This approach has been the mainstay method for dealing with market fluctuations pretty much across all industry sectors.
BUT - Is this sustainable? The worlds largest demographic is now well on it's way to leaving the workforce. And as Boomers leave the follow on demographic cohorts simply do not have the numbers to replace them. How are these two concepts related? Loyalty as Brand My gut tells me that companies that have managed bottom lines through letting staff go are going to face a very difficult time attracting talent. Why? Because the workforce is going to look for companies that have a reputation for loyalty to staff. Loyalty is going to become a vital part of a company's brand in terms of attracting talent. Companies that have already established that brand are going to have a competitive advantage in the realm of attracting talent. So if you are one of those companies I want to talk with you and hear your story. I promise this is not a sales pitch. I do want to share your insights into how you made this work and what motivated you to make that commitment. If you are one of these companies, I want to share your story! We have been exploring an excellent article by Jeff Haden on the traits of what makes an exceptional employee. He outlined eight traits of exceptional employees and I believe he hit the nail on the head in his article. What I have been looking at with you is the question; can you as a leader "create" exceptional employees?
My contention is that this is entirely possible and in fact I have seen it done many times. Let's focus on one particular trait for our study today. They're constantly exploring. Some people are rarely satisfied (I mean that in a good way) and are constantly tinkering with something: reworking a timeline, adjusting a process, tweaking a workflow. Good employees follow processes. Great employees tweak processes. Exceptional employees find ways to reinvent processes, not just because they are expected to...but because they just can't help themselves. Jeff Haden, 8 signs an Employee Is Exceptional (Which Never Appear on Performance Evaluations) Creativity We could call this natural curiosity or creativity but either way it is a tremendous trait to develop on your team. My contention is that everyone on your team "wants" to exercise this trait but often culture and insecurity stand in the way of this being fulfilled. Your role then as a leader is to create an environment that welcomes and nurtures this creativity. You provide a safe place to explore new ideas and you provide a structure for this to happen. While these two concepts may seem at odds you must create a structure to unleash your team’s creativity. Structure What do I mean by this? Creativity without a foundation on facts is opinion. Creativity borne from a set of facts and data is an opportunity. Teach your team to collect the metrics and data around an idea and you will have shown them how to bridge the gap between "gut" and "reality." When they know how to look for and collect the metrics and data they need to validate an idea, then you have truly unleashed that creative trait! Time is money One group I worked with had already become conversant with the "structure" of using metrics and collecting data. They measured all operations as a time = money equation either in terms of making money or losing money. Many large pieces of equipment were needed as part of the service they provided and equipment failure equated to lost time and money. For one piece of equipment located in the middle of the operation this was particularly true. Because they had been collecting data they knew how long it took to replace this machine and came up with a plan that would decrease the time needed to do this. There would need to be an outlay of funds to create the solution but their data demonstrated significant time and millions of dollars in cost savings. This may look like a home run but it was really an outcome of an environment that was already allowing for creativity on a small scale every day. Taking the step to something bigger was natural. Performance Leadership - Think About It! This is part of a series on exploring how to create exceptional employees on your team. There is a lot of discussion around the concepts I want to explore today. The first is that every organization is a reflection of its leadership. Not just the leadership at the top but the leadership right down to those immediate supervisors who are responsible for the smallest teams in the organization.
Who Has Influence To Create Change? This is not a new concept and admittedly one that I think finds general acceptance. Having cut my teeth on leadership in the armed forces this idea is something I have seen time and time again. Where I may differ from some is in my belief that while senior leadership bear responsibility for the culture of a company and often that will be reflected with junior leaders, it doesn't always have to be that way. Most change management research will tell you that by far the leaders with the most influence are those who are your direct reports. These individuals have far more influence than they realize. They actually have the potential superpower to create exceptional employees. Praise This brings me to the second concept (and potential superpower); praise. In his excellent article 8 Signs an Employee Is Exceptional (Which Never Appear on Performance Evaluations) Jeff Haden lists one of the signs of an exceptional employee as someone who praises in public. Those are the folks who don't hesitate to congratulate team mates who have done something well for the team. They tend to be those folks who carry a lot of influence with the group. Let's go back to point one; if you have the most influence over the people who report to you directly then practicing praise with your team is something that will "rub off on them." You can create an exceptional culture in your group by practicing exactly what you want them to do - praise. That is your potential superpower! Be Genuine Let's be clear, you need to know what to praise and when. It has to be genuine and it should be connected with performance or behaviour that you know is relevant to the aims of the team. Like the analogy of the geese flying in formation, each bird takes turns leading but each bird also makes sure to "honk" praise to encourage the bird in the lead. Thanks! To sum it up. If staff are influenced by you and excellent staff practice praising others then you practicing that same skill should get your staff to feel comfortable praising each other as well. There is more to come on creating exceptional employees but this is certainly something to think about. By the way "thank you" for taking time to read these short blogs. It is a real encouragement to me and I appreciate it! Performance Leadership - Think About It! This is going to be one of those discussions that you either will get or it will irritate you. The number one secret to creating an exceptional employee is to treat them with respect. I can almost hear the eyes rolling! Of course, you are thinking to yourself, I always treat my staff with respect. Let me push back on that thought a bit by defining what I mean by respect.
Respect There is the now famous picture of President Obama stopping to chat with the janitor in the Whitehouse. The meme typically goes something like "You can always judge the character of a leader by how well they treat the janitor." Stopping to say hi and asking about how they are doing is polite but not necessarily the kind of respect that will create an exceptional employee. Cog or Contributor In a manufacturing company in Sweden they were struggling with how to improve processes on the plant floor. Initially management wrestled with it and could not find a solution. As a result they called everyone in the plant together for a meeting so that collectively they might find a solution. (A good start.) Again as a group they went back and forth and could not come up with a solution. Finally in the back of the room the janitor put up his hand. Everyone stopped to look and the room went quiet, after all, what could he offer? He explained that each night as he mopped the floor he knew the path that each machinist took to either get parts or move an item down the line - just from the tracks they made. He had figured out that there was an awful lot of time being wasted doing these walking activities and after carefully explaining what he though might be a better arrangement for the production equipment and the location of the supplies they realized he had come up with the solution. How Do You Define Respect It may have been desperation that lead the leadership in that company to bring everyone together but by giving everyone a voice and a chance to participate in finding a solution they actually hit on a vital lesson. Everyone wants to contribute and help. Show them respect by giving them safe place to contribute and they will rise to the occasion. They will become exceptional employees. I would go a bit further than that meme; "You can always judge the true character of a leader by how they show respect for their people by allowing them a chance to contribute." This kind of respect goes a long way in creating exceptional employees. Performance Leadership - Think About it. I was reading an article by Jeff Haden (Contributing Editor at Inc.) on the 8 Signs an Employee Is Exceptional (Which Never Appear on Performance Evaluations). It was an interesting list and included among other things; They think beyond the job description, they are not afraid to ask questions, they like to prove others wrong and they are constantly exploring.
Can Exceptional Be Created? What got me thinking was that while he accurately pointed out those things that make for an exceptional employee and therefore how to look for them, was it possible to "create" this type of employee? What would a team of these types of employees look like? Discretionary Behaviour I believe you can create them and in fact Performance Leadership is predicated upon that belief. In combining a potent mix of operational excellence, continuous improvement and behavioural science the goal is to create employees who will practice what we call "discretionary behaviours." These types of behaviours have been highlighted on so many WestJet commercials where staff go out of their way to provide industry leading client experiences. (Looking forward to see what they do this Christmas for example!) After all, if one were to define "discretionary behaviours" wouldn't that include going beyond the job description, asking the hard questions to know the need better, proving others wrong by performing beyond what was thought possible and always exploring better ways to get things done? Of course it is! Turning Lead Into Gold! Finding an exceptional employee is like finding a diamond in the rough but creating a team of this type of employees is really the equivalent of the ancient alchemy of turning lead into gold! And it is possible! I know because I have witnessed it first-hand. I won't go into all the details in today’s post but I will give you a bit of a teaser. It starts with you. You must believe and function as a leader who believes that each member of your team "wants" to be exceptional! You must identify what in your current culture inhibits that possibility and identify what must be done to promote it. That is the first goal of performance leadership. Performance Leadership - Think About It! Recognition is one of the most underused tools in a leader’s repertoire. It is one of the easiest ways to drive performance and yet companies and leadership struggle to use it effectively. I believe this is due to several factors, leaders get bogged down in the "tyranny of the urgent" with paperwork, reports, meetings and so on. And there is what I call the 90/10 rule.
The 90/10 Rule The 90/10 rule is the idea that leaders will spend 90% of their time dealing with 10% of their staff. Every time I discuss this with clients it resonates. It is an easy habit to fall into as those staff often demand attention in one form or another. But here is what that really means; spending the majority of your time with underachieving staff members means that you are NOT spending time with the majority of your staff who ARE doing their job or who are excelling at it! That 90% group is where performance is happening. This is where the application of recognition can in fact do amazing things to drive performance even higher. The research around this is abundant and the international polling organization Gallup places recognition as one of the leading factors in driving engagement on high performing teams. Not Recognizing Has The Same Effect As Negative Recognition Teams with high levels of recognition consistently perform in the top percentile at about 70% better than teams with a negative recognition environment. Understand that negative recognition and the absence of recognition produce the same results. (Ignoring a behaviour is one of the fastest ways to extinguish it.) Low engagement results in higher absenteeism, lower quality of output or client experience, higher turnover and more safety incidents. Reward And Recognition Are Not The Same Often recognition is confused with reward and they are not the same. Recognition can be as simple as a pat on the back or a "good job" from the boss. Most importantly it should be genuine and consistent. Create a recognition rich environment and encourage your team to give each other a nod when something good is done. Here is an interesting tidbit from Gallup, women managers tend to do better at engaging their teams than male managers. One reason for this is a higher tendency toward recognition. Don't wait to recognize, look for the behaviours you want, set a daily schedule for yourself and start focusing on that 90% group! Performance Leadership - Think About It! We are social creatures and communication is one of the important things that set us apart from other species. As well this is connected to that idea that none of us want to be treated like mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed manure! If we agree with the concept that your people want to do a good job and are looking to find connection and meaning, then providing regular and clear communication is vital to helping that happen.
No News Is Not Good News The lack of this needed communication is something I see frequently. We all feel that we do a good job communicating with our teams and with each other. The best advice I ever received was that if we felt we were doing a good job of communicating then take those efforts and multiply by ten and you would be getting close to effective communication. Some companies have done an excellent job of addressing part of this by providing mentor programs. While this helps new staff in particular learn the company culture (hopefully the one you want them to learn) it does not replace the things that you as their leader need to provide them. Setting Staff Up For Failure No one wants to bump into a policy or expectation they did not know about. (Remember they all want to do a good job.) And nothing is as disheartening as when that happens. I recall many times walking onto a site, shop floor, or office to find someone frustrated and paralyzed to inactivity because they were not sure what they were supposed to do next. They did not want to do the wrong thing and they also did not want to "pester" the boss. It's like the old safety joke - nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. Clarity Of Expectation – Vital To Performance Research shows that leaders can drive up employee engagement through regular communication of expectations. According to Gallup - "Employees whose managers hold regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged as employees whose managers do not hold regular meetings with them. As well engagement is highest among employees who have some form (face to face, phone or digital) of daily communication with their managers. In their Q12 research, Gallup has discovered that clarity of expectations is perhaps the most basic of employee needs and is vital to performance. Helping employees understand their responsibilities may seem like "management 101," but employees need more than a written job description to fully grasp their role. Great managers don't just tell employees what's expected of them and leave it at that; instead, they frequently talk with employees about their responsibilities and progress. They don't save those critical conversations for once-a-year performance reviews." Jim Harter, Ph.D - Gallup A Little Time – A Big Return The bottom line is that as a leader you must be intentional about providing regular and clear guidance to your team. It is something that produces far greater benefits with the investment of a bit of your time. In fact I read one study that said a ten minute investment communicating with a staff member can drive up their engagement and performance for up to 80 hours! Don't you think that is a pretty good investment? Performance Leadership - Think About It! When looking at putting humanity back into our work we know that providing purpose is crucial. How does that look in a work setting? Let me share an example through an anecdote by John Girard which points to this at an individual level and its implication for leadership.
What do you do? "On a foggy autumn day nearly 800 years ago a traveler happened upon a large group of workers adjacent to the River Avon. Despite being tardy for an important rendezvous curiosity convinced the traveler that he should inquire about their work. With a slight detour he moved toward the first of the three tradesmen and said “my dear fellow what is it that you are doing?” The man continued his work and grumbled, “I am cutting stones.” Realizing that the mason did not wish to engage in a conversation the traveler moved toward the second of the three and repeated the question. To the traveler delight this time the man stopped his work, ever so briefly, and stated that he was a stone cutter. He then added “I came to Salisbury from the north to work but as soon as I earn ten quid I will return home.” The traveler thanked the second mason, wished him a safe journey home and began to head to the third of the trio. When he reached the third worker he once again asked the original question. This time the worker paused, glanced at the traveler until they made eye contact and then looked skyward drawing the traveler eyes upward. The third mason replied, “I am a mason and I am building a cathedral.” He continued, “I have journeyed many miles to be part of the team that is constructing this magnificent cathedral. I have spent many months away from my family and I miss them dearly. However, I know how important Salisbury Cathedral will be one day and I know how many people will find sanctuary and solace here. I know this because the Bishop once told me his vision for this great place. He described how people would come from all parts to worship here. He also told that the Cathedral would not be completed in our days but that the future promise of this building depends on our hard work.” He paused and then said, “So I am prepared to be away from my family because I know it is the right thing to do. I hope that one day my son will continue in my footsteps and perhaps even his son if need be.” The Power of Purpose In this example we immediately take note of the difference between the first worker who had no purpose for what they did beyond the immediate task and we are drawn to the account of the third stone mason who demonstrated a grander vision that gave purpose to his work. This speaks to something that I believe resides in all of us. We desire purpose not only in our personal lives and relationships but also in our work. This is crucial particularly when it comes to performance, after all which mason would you hire? This worker was gifted with an understanding of the purpose of his work but where did he get that meaning? The Bishop. Many of us will not readily see purpose in the work we do so it is something that good leaders must provide for their team. Some leaders will create the connection between the work and a greater good - for example Starbucks does not "just" sell coffee, they provide a social experience; a place for people to gather. Some companies tie the work with philanthropy by directing some of the profits to charity and/or providing time for staff to volunteer toward causes of their choosing such as "Habitat for Humanity" or the "United Way." Purpose and Worth As leaders we do this because we value our people. You communicate worth when you take the time to create purpose for the work being done. Know Your Purpose You will find that it helps to know your own purpose for what you do. For example, I do what I do because I believe that leadership can be an amazing experience that need not be terrifying or mundane. That leadership can be bigger than us and can be enjoyed and the more we enjoy it the more those we lead and work with will benefit. Have you created purpose for your team? If not, why not? Performance Leadership - Think About It! |
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