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7 Keys to Working Successfully with Your Direct
Reports
Copyright © 2007 Wally Bock
Used with permission of the author (http://www.threestarleadership.com/bookreviewpermissionform.htm)
Author: Wally Bock
Email: wally@threestarleadership.com
Website: http://www.threestarleadership.com
13 December 2007
The late Chuck Christiansen began
his working life in the warehouse at Consolidated Freightways and
retired from the position of Executive Vice President. I once
asked him what was different about being a top executive and being
a crew boss on a loading dock.
"It's really the same,"
he told me. "You still have to get the job done through the
people you deal with every day."
The
higher you rise in your organization, the more of the organization
you can have an impact upon. You don’t have that impact
directly. You do most of it through your direct reports, the
people you supervise. Here are seven keys to working with those
critical people
Pick
Good People
Quality people are the raw material
of success. Getting the best results from your team starts with
getting the best players you can get on the team. Remember, no
matter how much you polish that cubic zirconium, it will never
turn into a diamond. It will never cut glass.
Look at skills. Get the mix of
skills you need for the team to be effective. That's what made
Billy Bean so successful as General Manager of the Oakland A's.
When other GMs looked for stars, Bean looked for pieces of a
performance puzzle.
Look at values. The folks on your
team should share core values about how to do business. One of my
best clients ever was MFA Incorporated. Just about everyone on the
executive team was involved in farming in some way and they shared
common values that made reaching decisions easier.
Look at diversity. The most
effective teams have members who bring different perspectives and
information sources to the table. This may not always be
comfortable, just effective.
Look for strength. You want people
who are strong and who put other strong people on their own team.
Don’t'
settle. It's easy to do. When I was in Language School in Monterey
in the 1960s, many students were housed in barracks that had been
built as temporary stables during World War I. Many temporary
solutions turn out to be distressingly permanent and
energy-sapping.
Set
Clear Expectations
You can't hold folks accountable
for things they don't know they're supposed to achieve. So tell
them what you expect from them. Do this publicly, in meetings, to
make sure everyone from your team is on the same page. Do it
one-on-one, too, to make sure that each member of your team
understands his or her own unique role.
Clear is not enough. Expectations
should be reasonable, too. Make sure your folks have the time,
money and human resources they need to do what you expect them to
do.
One of my clients, Bob, ran a
trucking company. After he'd finished laying out his expectations
for performance, and making sure he was understood, he always
asked one more question. "Tell me how you're going to
accomplish what you've just agreed to."
The
discussion that followed gave Bob and his direct report the
opportunity to test the reasonableness of Bob's expectations. Many
times, resources were re-assigned or targets were adjusted to make
sure expectations were as reasonable as they were clear.
Give
Regular and Usable Feedback
Expectations are just the
beginning. You have to talk to your direct reports about their
performance. That's easy when performance is good.
But when performance is not up to
par, most of the managers I've met don't like talking to their
direct reports about it. They come up with all sorts of reasons
not to. Here are some of the reasons I've heard for not talking
with a subordinate about performance.
"I don't want to
micromanage."
"They know what they're doing. I really don't need to talk to
them."
"They're executives, they don't need supervision."
"If they don't know that they're doing poorly, then they
shouldn't be in that job."
"I don't want to damage their confidence."
"I believe you should hire good people and then leave them
alone."
None of those is a good reason.
Your job is to get top performance out of your group. If you've
got someone who's not performing, it's up to you to fix the
problem. It's your job to give feedback, even when that's hard for
you to do.
There's a real advantage to
catching problems early. The sooner you catch a problem, the
easier it is likely to be to solve. I call that the Dinosaur
Principle.
Like
dinosaurs, problems are easy to kill when they're small. But if
you let them grow up they can eat you. Feedback assures that sure
your subordinate understands how their performance measures up and
what the consequences are of good and bad performance.
Deliver
the Consequences of Performance
In my research on top supervisory
leaders, I found that the best ones, the ones I call Three Star
Supervisory Leaders, have a special way of thinking about reward
and punishment. Often, they don't even use those terms.
Using lots of different language,
they will tell you that the reward or punishment is the natural
result of a subordinate's behavior. As one of them told a
subordinate once, "Your performance will get you fired. I'm
just the one who notifies you."
Use the consequences you deliver to
help get the performance you want. Praise (and other rewards like
money, challenging assignments and promotion) will get more of a
behavior. Rewards will help you get people to try things. Rewards
require a delicate balancing act, though.
On the one hand, most of us don't
praise people enough. You don't have to do anything extravagant.
In Richland Hills, Texas, Police Chief Barbara Childress passes
out "'preciate ya!" cards to folks she catches doing
something good.
On the other hand, if you reward
every positive result, the rewards lose their value. Rewards are
best delivered inconsistently.
Negative consequences, like
reprimands and punishment, are different. In the words of one of
my trainees, "they should be as inevitable as nature."
That's because negative consequences are most effective when
they're delivered consistently.
Use
negative consequences to get a subordinate to stop doing
something. Be careful though. If you use negative consequences too
much, people will stop trying anything.
Take
Responsibility for Communication
You're the boss. You're the one
who's responsible for the performance of the whole group. Take
responsibility for making sure that you're communicating
effectively with your direct reports.
Those direct reports are like the
repeaters in an electrical system. You can't reach everyone in
your organization directly. Your direct reports will carry your
message. Make sure they understand it.
Start by making sure you understand
your key messages and that they're clear. Limit your key messages
so you only have one or two.
Then test those messages on folks
outside your organization. My friend, Mike, had teenaged
daughters. They were bright, articulate kids. But they didn't care
a bit about his business, which was just fine for his purposes.
He tested his explanations of
business strategy on his daughters. Since, like most teenagers,
they were fearless, they told him what they thought and helped him
sharpen his messages.
When
you're clear yourself, make sure your subordinates understand
what's important. Use communication tools like Active Listening to
assure that you're getting your message across.
Find
a Way to Discover Reality that Doesn't Depend on Your Subordinates
One of the toughest challenges
you'll have as a top executive is getting the truth about what's
going on. That's because the people who pass information up to you
tend to filter it and shape it for their own ends.
I'm not talking about conscious
deception here, though that happens sometimes. I'm talking about
the natural human tendency to avoid giving the boss bad news.
Develop your own way of getting to
reality. High tech tools like web research and news alerts can
help. Simple methods work, too.
Leonard owned a successful and busy
machinery sales business. As the boss he had lots to do, but he
took time, whenever he was in town, to open the mail.
Opening
the mail was Leonard's way of staying in touch with reality. Other
executives do some form of Management by Wandering Around (MBWA),
pioneered by the legendary Rene McPherson of the Dana Corporation.
Still others use an electronic open door policy that lets anyone
in the organization send them an email that they promise to
answer.
Set
the Right Example
The job of a leader is influencing
the behavior of others using the tools he or she has available.
Your most powerful tool is the example you set for your people.
The people who work for you watch
you carefully. They pay attention to the things you pay attention
to. They will be as ethical or not as you are. What you notice and
reward, they will value.
Make sure that your talk matches
your walk. The folks who work for you will know in heartbeat if
what you do and what you say don't match up.
Shelly Lazarus is Ogilvy and Mather
Worldwide Chairman and CEO. She's also considered a role model by
many people, especially women. She's not entirely comfortable with
that, but she takes being a role model seriously and she works
consciously to make sure her actions and her words match up.
Here's how she sets the example for her people.
"I know that work-family
balance is important … I choose always to go to the school play,
and field day and all that [because] it gives other women in the
company, or clients, the confidence to be able to say, 'I'm going,
too.'"
It's not always easy to be the role
model for everyone. But if you're the boss, that's part of the
job.
Your
job as a leader is to influence everyone in the organization to
move productively in the same direction. How you work with your
direct reports is critical to achieving the results you want.
Wally
Bock helps organizations improve productivity and morale, as
well as deal with the challenges of massive Boomer retirements. He
is the author of Performance Talk (http://www.performancetalk.com/).
He writes the Three Star Leadership blog (http://blog.threestarleadership.com/),
coaches individual managers, and is a popular speaker at meetings
and conferences in the United States and elsewhere. Read
more about him in his own words: http://www.threestarleadership.com/learnwally.htm
and contact
him at email: wally@threestarleadership.com
and website: http://www.threestarleadership.com
.
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Short summary
As the managers and leaders in organsiations rely on employees to
bring corporate objectives and goals to fruition, they have
several tools they can use to create productive workplaces;
such as effective communication, clarity and setting an
example.
Keywords
and relevant phrases
Accessibility, accountability, clarity, communication,
consequences, corporate culture, diversity, efficiency, ethics,
expectations, feedback, influence, management, performance management,
problem solving, objectives, punishment, reasonability,
recruitment, resources, responsibility, reward, role model,
selection, skills, strength, supervision, talent management,
values.
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