This topic is huge and there is no way a single post will be an exhaustive discussion about it. I suppose I can always come back to the topic and treat it like sequels - "Leadership II - This time its personal". But the fact that leadership is exactly that, personal, is too integral to the subject to wait for the sequel.
I have read a number of leadership books and been blessed to have worked with some incredible leaders in the past. I have also made enough mistakes working with various teams to have learned a few things the hard way. So here are a few lessons I have picked up along the way.
Unless the whole team is doing it wrong, don't correct the whole team. If you have a team of 20 people and 3 people are not doing something right (intentionally or not - we will talk about motives later), you have to talk one on one with the 3 or you will not correct them and you will eventually lose the other seventeen.
When you address a large group several possible things happen. The guilty assume you are not talking to them. After all, they only did the wrong thing a couple of times and only because they had just cause. You must, they think, be talking to the other two because THEY do it wrong all the time and don't have the same good reason.
Some of the twenty will think that you don't know who the guilty are. They will think that it is possible to do the wrong thing and get away with it. Most of the twenty will have enough integrity to still do the right thing but some won't and now you have more than three doing the wrong thing. Some of the 17 who have been doing the right thing will also think that you don't realize THEY have been doing it right the whole time. How would you like to work for someone who is not observant enough to know who is doing a good job and who is not?
Failing to have one on one conversations with folks that are doing wrong gives your team the impression that you don't have a clue about what is going on. I once worked for a guy who knew everything that happened in his area of responsibility - at least he gave that impression. He would ask us questions and when he finally got to one that we could not answer, he would answer it. I remember having complete confidence that he knew how hard I was working each and every day. He came up and thanked me for my performance more than once and I watched him pull other people to one side for private conversations that I imagine were very direct.
Why do people address the group instead of the individual? Earlier I said you should not address the group because the message gets lost in the crowd. And that's why some leaders do it. Looking someone in the eyes and addressing something that they did wrong is tough to do. Most of us don't like conflict and/or don't handle it well. When you are talking one on one, no one thinks you are talking about the other guy. Now the other person knows you mean him/her and s/he may react poorly and that scares some of us.
How do we combat that fear? How do we guard against the poor reaction? One of the things that helps me is that I try (don't always succeed) to not ascribe motives to behaviour. To be overly blunt, I don't care WHY something was done, only that it was done. Bad behavior does not necessarily come from bad people. Focus the conversation on the behavior and not on motives. If you think the person is doing the wrong thing because they are lazy, dishonest, or spiteful, then that colors how you deal with the person.
If you only want the person to stop doing the wrong thing or to start doing the right thing, then you just have to say that. "John, I have been observing you and you are doing a great job of staying busy and I appreciate how you are plowing through the workload. I need you to help me with something though. We are supposed to check every third one for accuracy and I have not seen you check one in the past 10 minutes. Please make sure we follow procedure and check every third one, thanks."
Now in that example, I did find the positives that John did as well. And that is another lesson, even the worst performer is doing something right. But I talked about the thing that John did wrong as well. I did not accuse John of any motives or blame him for anything else. How much different would the conversation have been if I had pointed out to John that his behavior is exactly why we are not making our accuracy bonus? Or if I had pointed out that John keeps rushing to get done early so he can go home and play war games on-line? Or if I had pointed out that John just doesn't care about the accuracy bonus since he is only working here while he is going to college?
All of those things might be true. Might be. Might not be. Might be what I am thinking even if they are not true. Nobody knows why John is not following the process except John. But it is really easy to have hurt feelings and generate a conflict when you focus on why. If you focus on the what, it gets much simpler. John can argue about his reasons but he can't argue with the fact that he was not checking every third box.
It won't be sunshine and roses, but it will a direct conversation about the behavior that needs to change. Once you start doing this and doing it consistently, you will have fewer and fewer times where you need to do it. Eventually it will leave you with just the one on one conversations about the things that your team does right.
When you have team members doing things right, you must address them one on one too. I also suggest that you do that to the whole group as well. Praise never gets lost in the crowd. This type of leadership requires you to be involved. You have to know who is doing well and who is not. And you also can't have a doghouse. IF John corrects his behavior and starts checking every third one even when he doesn't think you are looking, then you better notice and you better say something.
Like I said before, we will talk about this topic more and more over the next few months. Writing this out helps clear my own thoughts and functions as a reminder to me to do the RIGHT thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment