I have been pretty direct and harsh on you the leader thus far. There is a reason for it. The responsibility falls on you to hold yourself accountable because they already do. It would be nice to have a fun warm and fuzzy conversation about leading people, but it’s rarely fun and warm and fuzzy. It gets down right messy because you are leading human beings and we are a messy race.
Just because we are at work does not mean we stop being human. Are goals are often to achieve superhuman results and we often find we are able to achieve them if we just push hard enough. I worked for a company once who used the following as a driving focus.
“Set unattainable goals and expect to reach them.”
Another place had the following on the wall.
“Perfection is the goal, excellence will be tolerated.”
Think about that. Excellence will be tolerated. If you can’t see everything wrong with that statement, you have no business leading anyone.
Most people spend their lives never achieving a measure of excellence and that which they do achieve is often under celebrated. I am not suggesting we celebrate mediocrity but that we recognize individual accomplishment as it applies to the individual.
“Hey Bob, nice job on that call.”
It really is that easy to motivate and inspire. Just a little bit of recognition that took 5 seconds out of your day and made Bob’s better for a little while. Now the trick is that this cannot be a trick, it has to be sincere because they are as smart as you are, maybe not as educated, but just as intelligent. The moment you underestimate their intellect for a moment, you lose their respect.
“If I don’t respect you, why should I try for you?”
If you want respect you have to give it and earn it. Show them respect to earn theirs. Respect demanded is faked. Respect earned is loyalty.
It takes time to build this respect and it shows in their performance. If they respect you, they will want to perform for you. If you give praise, they will perform to get it. Everybody likes to show off and they are looking to you for direction on what to show off. Praise the behaviors that you like to see when you see them more often and they will just start behaving better.
It is a simple behavioral management tool that can save your company millions over years in turn over. Read the studies for yourself in the cost of turnover and then look at the industry that the issue created. Managing your attrition rate starts at managing how you manage your people.
The next step is in your hiring. If you know the type of candidate you are looking for then how come you keep hiring the wrong people?
Look at your interview process.
While working for a Fortune one-hundred company, the supervisory staff created a new interview guide with an answer key and scoring system. The answer key is made up of the kinds of things you want to hear and how they rate in a four point system. Tally it up and then discuss it with the peer you conducted the interview with and make your decision while it is fresh in both of your minds.
Always conduct interviews in pairs. You always want to have a second set of senses when spending some one else’s money. Your hiring decisions affect the bottom line long after you make the hire.
What does your training environment look like?
Do you know how your trainer does their job?
Does your trainer know your expectations of what a trained direct report looks like?
Never assume anyone can read your mind and expect them to be surprised when they had no idea you were thinking in those terms.
Your documentation will make or break you. I am not talking about your paper trail to firing, but the documentation you provide for them to do their jobs.
All documentation should be efficient and simplistic in design for conveyance of instruction. In other words a kid should be able to follow it. All complexity does is to reveal how simple your mind really is. Intelligent thinking breeds simplicity.
The United Sates Military makes all their technical orders readable at a low level because a mistranslation could cost lives not money, but if enough money is lost then it is livelihoods that are sacrificed by cutbacks or firings due to performance.
Simplicity breeds efficiency. If you want to be organized you need to get simplified. Let us start with your biggest nightmare, email.
Most email programs allow you to set some rule based auto distribution set up. When I was using Outlook, I would create a folder for each direct report and set a rule to send their mail directly to their folder. When it came time for reviews I had a good place to start looking for material.
I also carried a legal pad with me everywhere I went. When I would stop and talk to one of my people and it had to do with performance in anyway, I jotted notes and then typed them into a word file for later use.
When it came time to write reviews, instead of clamoring about trying to remember things, I simply had to open two folders and a personnel file with some numbers. It took me very little time to write up my last set of reviews because I did my research each and every day and I took notes.
When you study your people, it gives you the information you need to tailor your approach to their development as much as it helps tell them how their doing. Taking these kinds of notes and making time each week to review your weekly data log will help you identify their true needs that the numbers don’t reveal.
Now let’s get into thought process.
Let’s see how I built my thought process and see if you like it.
I spent three weeks combing through quotes. When I was done I had fifteen pages or so of quotes I used to help direct my thought process towards being a better leader. I narrowed the list down to ten and then printed it out and laminated it. I hung it right where I would see it and so would everyone else. I then asked my direct reports to do the same. They made their lists, I got them laminated and while we each had a different set of quotes, we were taking the same actions together. Mine is still somewhere I can see it every day and I often use it when working with clients.
Who knows how to motivate you better than you?
Remember simplicity is your friend. If you take a more simplistic approach in your thoughts it allows you to have more variety in your actions. Those actions are what will inspire the thoughts in your direct reports and motivate them to perform for you. It will also show them you care and will gain some trust and respect that will be evident in their loyalty.