Employee Keepers

It is a proven technique to give someone some basic information about using a new tool, let them use it for a while (play with it), and then revisit on a more formal basis. That is exactly what we’ve been doing for the past couple of days.

Consider play time over, for just a bit.

The acronym we have been using to determine a follower’s ability to perform a task on their own is like the old tennis shoe “KEDs”.

K=Knowledge of the job or task to be performed. The test I like to use here is a flight instructor technique. Have the follower describe the task in a step by step fashion. If they can say it, they can usually do it. Provided they have the physical skills and equipment needed.

E= Experience. Has the follower done this task before? Look for: closely related similar experience, closely supervised experience and satisfactorily performed experience in the exact task.

Exact task experience is an easy yes or no.

Closely supervised? Back to the flight instructor. When a flight instructor is preparing a student solo, the two of them perform landing after landing after landing. The goal is for the instructor to do less and less with each successive landing, until the student can perform several landings “solo”, that is with no instructor assistance. Here your task as a leader becomes asking the question, “has my follower performed this task by themselves without any assistance from me?”
If the answer is no, it does not necessarily mean you answer the experience part of this tool no. But you might give it a qualified “yes”. Understanding that you may have to provide some close “hands-off” supervision.

As far as the closely related similar experience, that is really a judgment call on your part as a leader. The critical question here is, “how close?”.

Ds=Demonstrating skills, the emphasis here is on currently demonstrating the skills. We all have followers who have done a similar, or the same task in the past, but can they perform the task right now? Observation is your best tool here. If observation is impractical or impossible the next best thing might be for you to resort to the flight instructor technique of having the follower describe in detail what you’re about to have them do.

In yesterday’s case studies, there was a tremendous impact on how we answered the experience question. A wrong answer here with us in the wrong leadership quadrant and reduce their effect this is a leader tremendously. The point being, we need to spend some time and careful consideration with this diagnostic tool. In fact, this is the essence of the adaptive leadership model. If done properly it helps you “draw, aim, shoot”. In our busy day to day duties, we often develop a reflex of “draw, shoot, aim”.

Tomorrow we will explore the most critical factor in your ability as a leader.

Let us know what you think,

Communicating properly is the multiplier of your leadership efforts. Proper communication will increase your leadership efforts. Improper communication will cause you to be much less effective as a leader. Communication also forms the foundation of the constructive culture you are trying to create for your organization. Did I say trying? Everything you do is a piece of the culture, so let’s make it constructive.

The examples of the Counter Person and the Technician illustrate a classic example of you having to make a choice about what to communicate and how to do it. Let’s say that the Counter Person, like the Technician, does not show a lot of “want to” for carrying out his task. The difference is in the motivation. The Counter Person is de-motivated from lack of experience and fear of failure. The Technician has had a major attitude shift that has de-motivated him.

Communication with the Counter Person will be more like that of a teacher and mentor. Your role as a leader is to get him up to speed. Your tone is reassuring and helpful.

With the Technician, your communication is direct and pointed to the task. You adopt a no compromise and an expectancy of compliance tone.

Big difference, but you are operating in the Player Coach quadrant in both examples: High time spent on the task, low time spent on the relationship.

Please do not confuse the tone of the conversation with your tone of voice. A tone of expectancy of compliance does not mean yelling, for example.

One more diagnostic tip: Look at the E (Experience) in the KEDs diagnostic tool. The Technician is a yes, the Counter Person is a no. The answer to that question changes the communication, which, if you adapt, makes you more effective as a leader.

Fascinating stuff and it will make all the difference in your effectiveness and efficiency as a manager. This will also make a difference in how things are in your organization, or your organizational culture.

Tomorrow, let’s take a quick look at the diagnostic tool in more detail.

Let us know what you think.

Curt

As promised, we will now look at question # 9 from the Leadership Survey. We are going to make the assumption that prior to the recent “spotty record”, he was doing a good job.

Let’s diagnose.

KEDS

Does he have the knowledge, I say yes.
Does he have the experience, yes again.
Is he currently demonstrating the skill, I say no.

CCM

Does he display the confidence to do the job? Let us make the assumption that he does. So, yes.
Is he committed, no.
Is he motivated, no.

Ok, you are the leader, what does your employee need from you at this point?

The real lynchpin in this case is the attitude of the employee. If he is lost and seems like he wants to find a way out of his present circumstance, you will be Coaching from the Press Box. Create a dialogue, two way conversation, facilitate ideas and let him do much of the planning with your direction.

What is more likely in this situation, is an attitude of, “Performing Poorly and Proud of It”. You know, the “I cannot be replaced” mind set. If this is what you suspect, you have to go back to Player Coach. Specific actions, time lines with you calling all the shots. When dealing with someone who has slipped because of the attitude we described, this is a punitive leadership style and the follower needs to hear that from you.

A word of caution, most of the leaders have a, Coach from the Sidelines/Coach from the Press Box 1-2 natural style. As a result, most of us are going to want to see the employee in thes case with basically a good attitude, but a little lost. Do not fall into this trap!!! This really gets into the essence of adaptive leadership. You must know your tendencies, make a proper diagnosis and adapt your style to meet the needs of the follower.

How are we doing with this? Let us know.

Tomorrow a bit about communication, and we will use this and yesterday’s case as examples.

See you then.

Curt

Let’s try another one. Look at question #5 of the Leadership Survey you took on May 24. How ready is the parts counter person to take on this task, based on ability and willingness?

First, ability: KEDs

Knowledge, does he know how to do the job? Based on what we see, I would say no.

Experience, not much, surely not enough to give him a yes.

Demonstrated skills? No.

We do not have enough information to answer the three C’s of willingness with any degree of certainty and that is ok in this situation. We have enough to go on with the “strike out” in ability. It really does not matter if our follower is fully committed, confident and motivated to the hilt, he needs training!!

Your job as a leader is to lead from the Player Coach quadrant.

You will remember, this is where the conversation focuses a lot on the task and little on relationship.

It is also more of a one way conversation, where most of the input from the follower is letting you know if you are being understood and if they know what is being asked of them. This is training and training is usually a lot of “tell”.

It is time for “shoulder to shoulder” time.

The best visual I have of this is someone teaching someone else to play the piano. There they are, sitting on the bench, facing the same direction…shoulder to shoulder.

If your Primary /Secondary style is: Coach from the Press Box/ Coach From the Farm, you will have some adapting to do. Other Primary/Secondary styles will not require as much movement on your part.

Here is another note, some of us just do not know what we need to know to give a follower basic training on their jobs. That is ok. Our job as a leader is to diagnose the needs of our follower and provide them what they need.

This may be time for a mentor or an outside trainer.

If it is someone other than you is doing the training, make sure you give them the position power they need before the training begins.

Now, let’s compare this situation with the Technician in question #9….tomorrow.

Until then, let us know what you think.

Curt

More Leadership and Culture tomorrow. Right now, I would like to hear from you.
What is your favorite Michael Jackson song?

When we begin our assessment of our follower’s readiness to take on a task, the more specific we can be about the task the more accurate our diagnosis. For example, “improve sales” is vague. “Develop a daily prospecting plan to improve sales”, is specific.

Over the next couple of days we are going to take a look at several examples to give you some virtual experience in applying these principles. We can use some of the questions from the Leadership Survey you took on May 24.

Let’s look at question number eight.
So, what about the three questions concerning ability with the receivables team? It looks like they have the knowledge, they have the experience and, from what we can tell, demonstrable skills to get the job done without your supervision.
Now, we are going to have to make an assumption about their willingness. For this example let’s assume that, because of their ability, they are very confident, you have picked them because of their commitment and they’re all motivated to get the job done.
Hey, we have a situation where all six questions are answered yes. Hooray!
So, what do we do as a leader?
Well, not a lot. With a group like this we really need to adopt the leadership style in the lower left-hand quadrant, Coach from the Farm.
We basically need to describe the task, tell them the due date, ask them if they have any questions and get out of their way. It sounds pretty easy doesn’t it?
And that is, unless your primary-secondary leadership style is player coach-coaching from the sidelines. If it is, your tendency will be to get into too much detail minutia for the abilities of the follower. One possible outcome of this leadership behavior with this group is, setting up a state of confusion. They may think you are giveing all these specific directions because you were not happy with what they did with the last task you assigned.
The result of confusion is almost always a less than stellar performance from the team.
Not because of the potential of the team, nor their readiness, willingness or ability to perform the task, but because we went to our default leadership style instead of diagnosing and adapting our leadership style to the readiness level of the team…based on the task.
That’s what I want to leave you with right now.
Whenever we begin to diagnose and adapt our leadership style, always base it on the task at hand.
The more specifically you define the task, the greater your ability to diagnose. The better the diagnosis, the more likely you will choose the correct leadership style for the situation.

Tomorrow we will take two more examples. Until then, let us know what you think.

Curt

Before we begin to apply this information, we need to take a look at a couple of finer points.

Reference the Saturday the 13th article, question number three. Please notice that the question is “currently demonstrating” the skills to accomplish this task?

It is extremely important that, especially when dealing with either inexperienced or a very enthusiastic follower, that you analyze this question very carefully. When dealing with people who have proven themselves, you might “assume” they can handle anything you throw their way. And, quite frankly, this might be true. What you do not see, however, is how much more efficiently and effectively the task might have been accomplished with a little adaptability on your part.

Here is an example. After assigning a task, have you ever caught yourself asking this question, “Holy cow, I wonder what is taking Curt so long to do that? It’s been a week and a half.” A typical knee-jerk reaction of the leader might be that Curt is displaying creative avoidance, or “push back”. An alternative possibility is that Curt no longer has the skill that would once have allowed him to do the job quickly and efficiently. Essentially, Curt is trying to perform a task for which he does not possess the skills. He may be attempting to learn as he goes. This is rarely a formula for speed and efficiency.

The bottom line: when you ask that diagnostic question make sure you emphasize “current” part of the formula.

Questions 1 and 2 are much more straightforward. Another way of looking at question 1 is, “has my follower been trained to perform the task?”.
A really easy way of looking at question 2 is, “Have they ever done it before?”.

Hopefully this helps clarify this portion of your diagnostic routine.

I sense that we are in a good place to start applying this information. So let’s start to do that tomorrow.

As always, let us know what you think.

Curt.

Willingness is our topic for today. Let’s get something straight right from the beginning. We are not talking about whether the person is willing perform the task; we are assuming they are willing. What we’re speaking of it is relatively how willing. Another way of looking at it is the degree of resistance that is naturally inherent in the follower.

Similar to diagnosing ability, we can ask ourselves three questions:

• How confident is my follower in doing that task without supervision.
• How committed is my follower to completing that task without supervision.
• How motivated is my follower and completing the task without supervision.

And, just like diagnosing ability, the more “no” answers you get the more your follower will need you to intervene as a leader.

Let’s explore each one of these factors a little bit more carefully.

Confidence is usually indicated by a can-do attitude. One thing we have to be careful with here is what I like to call the “eager beaver” syndrome. I’m sure you’ve all had people who are raising their hand constantly asking to be assigned a task, but just aren’t quite ready to complete the task. Herein lays a very subtle but salient relationship between willingness and ability. The follower’s willingness can be modified by their ability and vice versa.

So, a big part of your ability to properly diagnose is being aware of all factors involved.

One of the best definitions I have ever heard of commitment is “the removal of all other options”. I think this is a good way to look at how committed your follower is to the task. Have they mentally removed all the other options?

Now let’s take a look at motivation. I always judge motivation by how quickly someone tries to schedule the task.

I would like to leave you with a question. What are some ways you use to judge the follower’s motivation?

Let us know.

Curt

Okay everyone, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and delve. Today we will focus on some of the indicators that will help you diagnose what your leadership style needs to be so you can be the greatest assistance for your follower.

For most of you, that last sentence will represent a huge shift in how you look at leadership. Being an effective and efficient leader means that you must diagnose what your follower needs from you whenever you assign them a task, and then provide it. Looking at leadership from this persective will make you more effective. This is also a huge step in creating a culture of success in your organization.

I mentioned in yesterday’s article that we would be looking at the follower’s readiness, willingness and ability to do a task. Actually, our follower’s readiness to perform a task is a function of willingness and ability.

Let’s focus on ability first, since it’s the more concrete of the two.

When it comes to ability, ask these three questions:

1. Does my follower have the knowledge to accomplish this task without supervision?
2. Does my follower have the experience to accomplish this task without supervision?
3. Is my follower currently demonstrating the skills to accomplish this task without supervision?

If the answer to any of the above questions is no, your follower is going to need some type of assistance in performing the task. The type and how much will be a function of the number of “no” answers.
Notice there are two elements to the leadership style. The first is qualitative, what type of assistance. The second is quantitative, how much.

I think that’s a good start to our delving.

We will continue tomorrow with willingness.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Curt

Hello all, sorry for the missing two days, sometimes the traveling gets in the way of the writing.
I think we have described adequate combinations of primary-secondary leadership styles. So now it’s time to start putting what we know about the styles and effectiveness together.

Knowing your tendencies is important. They create the foundation from which you occasionally must move. I’m not telling you that your tendencies are bad. However, since there is no such thing as “the” leadership style that effectively fits every occasion, we need to be able to move from our foundation at times in order to be effective.

The biggest value of knowing your tendencies and how rooted you are in them is that it gives you an idea of how uncomfortable you’re going to feel when it is appropriate to move to another style. This knowledge can also indicate to you how much energy it will take to make appropriate adjustments. Just how rooted you are, is indicated by the number in your primary box. The higher the number, the more effort it’s going to take and the more uncomfortable moving to another style will be.

I hope this conversation begs the question, “How do I tell when I need to use a particular style?”. The answer to this question depends on a couple of variables. The first variable is the task to be performed. The second variable is how ready, willing, and able your followers to perform the task.

Tomorrow we will delve into how we can tell the readiness, the willingness and the ability of your follower to perform a given task.

Thank you for your kind attention,

Curt