The challenge in these conversations is to (1) keep your cool, (2) listen for how the employee avoids, blames others, or denies any performance shortfall, and (3) respond assertively so that you move the “monkey” of accountability over to the employee, where it belongs. The way some employees deflect responsibility can raise your ire in a heartbeat. You can easily get tangled up in their masterful manipulation which some have honed over the years with past bosses who failed to get them to do what they are paid to do.

The solution is to do dry runs of the conversation. In other words, practice.

When it comes up in a workshop I often ask the manager to engage with me in a short role play of the interaction in front of the class. He/she plays the difficult employee as realistically as possible (and they usually do a very convincing job of it). I play him/her, the manager, and we enact a typical or real situation. Then, with the help of the observing class, we analyze how successful I was avoiding the employee’s “hooks” and getting him/her to take adult accountability for the job performance in question. We may then replay the scenario with the manager playing himself/herself and me becoming the employee. Training participants and certainly the managers in the role plays frequently report that these magic moments were the high point of learning for them from the entire course.

You can do this at work. Ask a trusted peer manager or perhaps your boss to help you out. Have them play the employee and give the interaction a couple of dry runs. If the employee (actor) succeeds in turning the responsibility or blame back on you, analyze what you said (or didn’t say) that allowed this to happen. Make corrections and role play it again. Consider recording the practice rounds in audio or video to help you get a clearer picture of how you are approaching it.

One neat by-product of this methodology is that when you take on the persona of your difficult employee in a role play, you actually get a feeling of what it is like for him or her when interacting with you. It takes you to a new level of understanding of what is going on between you two and helps you be more effective dealing with the individual. I know, it’s weird but it works.

Here’s a quick secret for getting along and playing nicely in the sandbox: When something goes amiss, don’t look for guilt, look for cause. Focus on correcting the situation and not blaming anyone. The former develops support, the latter enmity.

While he mentions it in a more general context of human relations, it is a good reminder for managers whose employee screws up on a task and the situation calls for feedback.

Depending upon the gravity of the situation and the history of the employee involved, it’s hard not to swing directly to the blame option. Judgments of the employee as incompetent, uncaring, or even malicious flow into our mind. This just makes us angry, a rather destructive frame-of-mind in which to engage the employee in “constructive” feedback, wouldn’t you say?

Operating from a place of anger or frustration activates what author Seth Godin calls our reptile mind, causing us to block out other explanations. We neglect to consider the staffer’s skill level (training) or other external forces in play such as lack of resources, too many pressures on the employee, or difficulties in the system of work and information flow.

Blame speaks–not favorably–to the imagined intention of the individual. If it is their fault, why look beyond the person to other possible contributing causes?

We need to program into our minds–yes, we’re talking about a mental habit here–a default response that scans for cause, not blame, when a staff member falls short of acceptable performance. Your spirit of problem-solving has a chance of turning around performance AND building a more trusting relationship. The other way never will.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.

As John mentions, sometimes leaders foster a culture that asking your boss for help is a sign of weakness or failure. This can have really negative consequences for the organization because employees will not tap into the experience and wisdom of their boss when it is appropriate. In the end they risk making poor decisions that can cost a lot.

But the real issue here involves, as is so often the case with the art of management, a paradox:

• On the one hand you want your people to take full accountability for their job, including making decisions and taking action without always running to you to solve their problems or provide cover by endorsing decisions they are about to make.
• On the other hand, you want your staff to come to you when they are truly stymied, the cost of a bad decision is too high, or they need information that is understandably beyond their reach.

The “art” here is, when an employee brings a problem to your doorstep, to be able to differentiate between a problem that they should be able to handle on their own and one on which it is appropriate to consult with you.

Make a point of clarifying with each of your direct employees what sorts of issues or situations should trigger their talking with you first. You can do this as part of a larger conversation about the performance expected from them. Part of their performance, after all, is bringing their independent judgment to bear in their job. These guidelines, of course, may need to be adjusted as you go forward, so be sure to revisit them periodically, as needed.

Finally, having done such a good job clarifying decision boundaries, resist the ever-present temptation to break these guidelines by taking the “monkey” and solving a problem that clearly belongs to them.

]]> http://buildbestbosses.com/2010/02/22/the-paradox-of-who-makes-the-decisions/feed/ 0 http://buildbestbosses.com/2010/02/01/make-it-safe-to-take-the-risk/ http://buildbestbosses.com/2010/02/01/make-it-safe-to-take-the-risk/#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 12:00:23 +0000 Ian Cook http://buildbestbosses.com/?p=1481 In a recent workshop I ran on Interaction Styles I had the group working collectively at a case problem to solve. There was a lot of information and idea sharing and a lot of cross-talk, some of it in sub-groups around the table. At times it became rather chaotic and the effectiveness of the group’s process dipped. Nevertheless, they persevered and managed to complete it accurately just as allotted time expired.

During the facilitated debrief discussion an interesting issue emerged. One woman said that, when the process seemed to hit its highest point of chaos, she sorely wanted to get up, grab a marker, approach the flip chart, and start leading her colleagues by capturing what they were saying and organizing it into a coherent strategy to solve the problem more quickly.

I asked her, “Why didn’t you do that?” She replied, “Because I didn’t want them to think I was being too controlling. I wanted them to see me as a team player.” Notice the assumption she had made about how they would perceive her well-intentioned act to contribute her particular strength (organizing) to the success of the group effort.

I turned to the group and asked them, “If she had stepped up and done this, (1) would you have seen it as controlling and not being a team player and (2) would it have helped you solve the problem faster than you did?” They all agreed that they would have appreciated, not resented or judged, her action and that it would indeed have helped them perform better.

This was what we in the training field call a “teachable moment.” The woman who had hesitated to step forward in the exercise learned to question her assumptions and, if her spirit of intent is genuine, to take the risk of contributing where she has a skill. The group learned the importance of making it OK (i.e. safe) for individual members to step forward and take such risks. Both innovative thinking and improved group performance requires this.

Have you made it clear to your staff that will support them when they bring their particular skills and perspectives forward when they have an idea or a better way to proceed? You may think you have but don’t assume that they have received the message!

Now take this concept micro, down to the one-on-one relation between you (the boss) and one of your employees who is listless, sloppy, and clearly underperforming. You want him to change…to a new way of working: doing the job asked of him. If this individual is, in fact, capable of doing the job well, the problem is one of attitude, of lack of motivation.

The best leaders at the mid level are able to turn around this commitment thing. They:

• Clearly lay out what they expect from their under performer
• Raise for discussion current gap in his performance
• Express their belief in his ability to do the job well
• Lay out the benefits, to both the employee and the organization, of a solid job performance
• Involve him in identifying the obstacles to his performing better
• Get him (i.e. not the boss) to come up with a plan to turn around his performance
• Reach agreement on the plan, with specific actions, measures and time frames

Going deeper, the leader might probe into what the employee wants from his job, what motivates him, and what’s missing for him as a motivator in his current work. All the while, in the background hangs the potential for consequences if the staff member chooses not to change. The leader brings tough love to the situation.

The best bosses foster a mindset of high performance in their unit. They get all of their people to want success and want to perform at a level of which they can be personally proud. Almost all of your people want these–success, pride, accomplishment. You can count on this because they are human beings. When you first confront a poor performer, however, they just don’t realize that they do.

I touched upon this phenomenon in my last post. Here now are four reasons for managers’ tendency to adopt a directive style in these situations. See if you can relate to any of these in yourself and perhaps in other managers where you work.

1. Managers have previously developed the “take action” habit. Most of them are promoted from the ranks of individual contributors where they worked in a technical, professional, administrative or blue collar activity. Here success came from organizing and controlling inanimate “things,” such as reports, data, concepts, materials, and so forth. Their job was to take some kind of action or make some decisions around these items. They come to management having already developed a “default,” action-oriented response to their work.
2. A manager’s key success factor is his or her ability to identify and solve problems. Managers are constantly being presented with urgent issues. When they solve one they feel good, feel like they have added value to the operation. So, it’s not surprising that when an employee brings forward a problem the manager’s default response is either to solve it himself/herself or tell the employee how to solve it.
3. They most likely already know the solution. Managers typically have been around longer than many of their employees and have learned a lot about working effectively. Furthermore, if they came up from the ranks, they understand the front line work from personal experience. Often the solution is a no brainer to them. Without duct tape to cover their mouth, it is hard to keep from blurting out the answer.
4. Managers are busy people. It is simply quicker to give the answer, check it off mentally as another problem solved, and send the employee on his/her way. Any other response, such as coaching the staffer to come up with a good solution, will take more of the manager’s limited time.

If you can see one or more of these forces operating within you, you have reached the first step toward changing your default behavior to one of coaching and getting your employees do the mental heavy lifting around problems they encounter in their work.

More to come about this in my next post.

This is a powerful process which generates stimulating, problem-solving discussions. While I facilitate it and inject my perspective and suggestions, so many of the ideas come from the wisdom and experience gathered around the table. In addition, during the course of the conversation opportunities periodically arise for me to engage in an on-the-spot role play with a manager around a specific challenge with an employee.

At the end of one of the sessions, a manager said that she saw a pattern in all of the issues that she and her colleagues had brought up. She said that every case involved the manager acting too soon and without sufficient information to deal with the situation in the optimal way. She went on to say that we managers aren’t listening enough, aren’t asking enough questions.

It was a brilliant summation and I couldn’t have agreed with her more. In fact, as I cast my mind over the two other sessions I held that day, this pattern was present there too.

Each case involved, at least in part, an employee who wasn’t open with the boss about the employee’s motivations, needs, opinions, concerns, fears, assumptions, perceptions of their current behavior, reasons for poor performance, etc.

• An employee is bored and unmotivated. The challenge is first to get him to identify what he wants from his work.
• A staff member bickers a lot. The manager has to get her to shift from blaming to expressing what she needs instead, what is missing for her around each complaint.
• An employee believes he walks on water and rates himself a 5 (out of 5) in all areas. The manager must first get him to point to the specific results and/or behavior that he believes he is delivering in his job.

We talked that day about the strong tendency managers have to try too hard and too quickly to “fix” “people problems” with their own advice or direction. As a result, they usually end up pushing their own solution on the employee (boy, don’t we all love it when our boss does that?) or solving the wrong problem.

If only, as that manager said, we would first really listen in order to really understand.

Your attitude has a huge multiplier effect on your skills and knowledge.”

Your employees can have terrific skills and a lifetime of technical knowledge but, unless their attitude is positive, they will fail to apply these toward the best results they can achieve.

As a leader, your skills and knowledge are the price of entry, the starting platform on which to build your effectiveness. Ultimately, however, it is your assumptions, beliefs and habits of thought that will turn you into a truly effective leader and differentiate you from the rest.

For example, you can be a whiz at strategic planning and a hard driver for results. But if your belief about recognizing the performance of others can be summed up by “The fact you are still on the payroll is your signal that you are doing a good job,” you will not receive the best your people have to contribute.

I regard skills and knowledge as important resources, nothing more. So, when you are trying to turn around an employee’s performance or help her achieve more of her potential, spend less time attending to her competency and spend more on her level of commitment.

How about you? Do you have access in your life to a trusted advisor? When was the last time you challenged yourself to grow and become better? Or, if you are a leader, do you have an employee who is ready to expand his or her capacity? Is one of your direct reports stagnating, in coasting mode?

Maybe it’s time for a coach…or a mentor. In case it is, here’s my quick take on the differences:

• First of all, you can find both coaches and mentors internally, within your organization, or externally.
• Coaches…
  • Usually have professional training in guiding, advising and challenging others.
  • Engage in a contracted role in aid of specific goals and outcomes the client wants to achieve.
  • Bring a process, a formal structure, which they customize based on the needs of their client.
  • Work in a regular, reasonably intense pace over a relatively short period of time (generally, from a few weeks up to one year)
  • May be asked to help the client address issues around inadequate job performance, specific skill development for current or future positions, or career development in general.
• Mentors…
  • Typically are older individuals with broad career experience & accumulated wisdom.
  • Possess a deep knowledge of the organization, its culture, history and politics.
  • Engage in a less formal, less focused, process of periodic, conversations with their “mentee.”
  • Support and advise, may also advocate overtly or behind the scenes on behalf of their mentee.
  • Serve in the role of a trusted advisor, someone to run ideas and challenges by for advice.
  • Help more generally in the area of personal effectiveness and development.

While I do executive coaching, I think coaches and mentors can work hand-in-glove. I usually encourage my coaching clients, once our time together comes to an end, to seek out a mentor for ongoing, periodic advice, course corrections and the occasional boot in the backside.

Can the direct boss be a coach or a mentor? Yes, absolutely, as long as he or she has the skills and the genuine intention to help the employee grow.

They are well worth checking out on his Great Leadership blog. These 10 items bust a few myths that managers and yes, practitioners like me, have been known to proclaim as research-based facts.

Rather than commenting on them here, I’ll let them speak to you for themselves.