10. The Most Valuable Asset for Leader–People

“Leadership development is about helping people grow and if I can get people as individuals growing, then I’ve got a company that grows — James McNerney”

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader — John Quincy Adams”

A truly great leader is well versed in managing people issues because it lies at the heart of the leader-follower relationship. What can you do to stay more informed on the best practices of developing people?

Why do some organizations give little attention to employee development? All too often, organizations take a “Sink or Swim” attitude toward new employees. The prevailing wisdom is that throwing an employee into a novel situation will show if that employee has the knowledge and skills to do the job. However, a better strategy is to focus on adequate preparation and training of employees from day one onward. Take new employees. They come into an unfamiliar environment wanting to do a good job but are hampered by a lack of knowledge. That creates undue stress. Moreover, new employees are conflicted. They want to demonstrate their competence, but they don’t know what they are supposed to be doing. Investing in a good orientation program pays off handsomely. This ensures that employees are trained in their work tasks, they can learn proper work rules and procedures, ask questions, and get to know the company and the people. As a result, they hit the ground running, with less stress and more positive feeling about the leader and organization.

Leaders should also think of employee training as an ongoing process. Key personnel is to be able to assess employee training needs. Ask supervisors and employees themselves, about training needs is one solution. Analysis of performance data can also show areas where employees may be falling short, presumably due to lack of training. Get into the habit of regularly assessing employee training needs. Develop a system. Budget for training. Use analysis of problems and failures to try to determine if additional training will prevent future issues.

The more time you invest in developing a good performance system, the higher the payoff. Why? Because performance management and performance feedback are crucial to high-functioning tasks.

Create Quality Performance Measures: Starting with job analyses, develop measures to assess employee performance. These should focus directly on what it takes to perform the job well. Get help from someone trained in such measurement, if needed. Some key considerations:

· The performance measures should be tailored to each specific job.

· They should focus on behaviors rather than on the personal qualities of the team member.

· They should be behaviorally grounded with examples of what outstanding, fair, and poor performance looks like. Create rubrics to help in this process.

One of the most important tasks of the leader is to oversee performance appreciation and performance management. Consider your current performance appreciation system. What are the strengths? What are the weaknesses/complaints? How could you make it better?

Provide Performance Feedback to Motivate: When it comes to providing performance feedback to your direct reports, here are some guidelines

· Feedback should be descriptive and specific.

· Look broadly and objectively at the situation and the person being evaluated. Consider the actions and needs of the team member, the requirement of the organization, and how the situation may have affected performance.

· Feedback should be directed at behavior that can be changed. It should not be used as an opportunity to criticize or find fault with the employee/team member.

· Feedback should be well-timed. More immediate feedback is better.

· Feedback should be understood by both parties. If necessary, additional information should be brought in to help clarify the feedback and the process.

· Feedback should be proactive. If a change in past behavior is required, specific directions for change should be provided and both parties should agree on the need for change and the remedy.

· Feedback should be a natural and ongoing process in the supervisor-supervisee relationship.

Consider the last few performance feedback sessions. Did you follow these guidelines? Make a checklist beforehand to ensure that any feedback you provide leads to positive change and is not received as negative or punitive.

Use Management by Objectives (MBO): Management by Objectives is a goal-setting technique popularized by Peter Drucker in the 1950s. It involves having supervisors and subordinates sit down to jointly decide on performance goals for a particular period of time (e.g., quarterly, or annually).

The idea behind this technique is that if employees have a voice in goal setting, they will be more motivated to achieve those goals.

Here are the “rules” for a leader’s effective implementation of MBO:

· Employees must participate in the setting of performance goals and have a true voice in goal setting. Leaders shouldn’t restrict employee input.

· Feedback about goal attainment must be provided. This suggests goals need to be objectively measured.

· The leader must provide guidelines for improvement. An essential part of performance management.

· Set goals must be realistic. Goals need to be challenging, but not unattainable.

· The organization must support the MBO program. It’s best when implemented organization-wide.

· MBO results must factor into employee career progress. Goal attainment needs to be connected to promotions, raises, etc.

Keep Your Talented Team Members: Voluntary turnover — valued employees who choose to leave a department or an organization — can be an incredible talent drain for a leader’s team. Retain employees by cultivating an open and honest atmosphere in which they feel free to express themselves. Here are some more ideas for promoting this type of environment: Provide opportunities for mentoring. Give your team members the chance to learn something new or share their knowledge. What are some strategies that leaders can use to try to keep their team members?

Show Them Opportunities: Be sure to clearly and regularly communicate the opportunities for advancement, increased rewards, and other perks of staying in the organization. As noted elsewhere, showing concern for employees’ career development and advancement is a good way to keep them with you and motivated. When leaders give chances that challenge, stretch, and better individuals, they advance the growth and development of those they lead. When you cut through the clutter that leadership gurus create around the concept of leadership, you’ll see that what counts most is opening doors for others.

Allow for Work-Life Balance: In certain instances, leaders should be willing and able to offer accommodations for workers who want more time with family. Consider alternative work schedules, such as compressing the workweek to allow employees another day off. Is working from home an option? What about reduced hours?

All too often, leaders are not proactive in their efforts to keep talent. Tapping into employees’ individual needs and desires is important, as well as being transparent about what you have to offer as incentives to stay, is the key. Clear and transparent communication is both the foundation for creating a great work environment and the means for developing good relationships with followers of all types. How can you make employees more aware of the benefits of working with you and your organization? How can you create or gather the resources to allow you to keep talented employees? What are some employee retention strategies that have worked for you in the past, and can you apply those in the future?

Consider Alternatives to Cash: Writing a check can be impersonal, particularly if the monetary bonus is small. Giving a personalized gift instead (e.g., theatre tickets for the arts-inclined; golf gear for the avid golfer), not only gives it a personal touch, but it helps strengthen the employer-employee relationship.

Catch Them Being Good: Giving “on-the-spot” bonuses/rewards for particularly fine performance may work better than an annual bonus because it rewards the specific performance. It also has the element of a positive surprise. Research on positive reinforcement clearly shows that incentives are stronger if they are tied to performance and are unexpected.

Bonuses can be a useful incentives if used in a wise (and psychologically sound) way. They should emphasize both the rewarding of individual contributions and should also develop a good leader-follower relationship.

The 5 Most Common Ways Leaders Screw Up

1. Under-communicating. It sounds crazy because so many leaders are always talking, but I’m referring to formal communication from the upper levels of the organization to the lower. Leaders need to ensure that employees throughout the organization know what is going on.
2. Neglecting Team Member’s Issues: Too often, top-level leaders leave team members with issues. But employee morale, evaluation of performance, and identification of high potential should be leadership issues. Effective leaders are in touch with what their followers think, know, and do. Leadership and HR should be inextricably interlinked.
3. Lack of Vision (or Shared Purpose): Leaders need to have a clear vision of where an organization is headed, and create a sense of shared purpose among all organizational members. Importantly, leaders need to constantly communicate the vision and shared purpose to everyone (see #1 above).
4. Lack of Transparency: From the employees’ perspective, bad bosses are inconsistent, unpredictable, and perceived as having “double standards.” Their followers are always wondering about the “hidden agenda.” In their effort to control things, these bad leaders’ figure “what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
5. Unwillingness to Change and Innovate: Far too many leaders and organizations have failed and disappeared because of an inability to adapt and innovate. “Staying the course.” “It’s my way or the highway” is the road to failure.

Keep Your Team Motivated

Positive Effect is Contagious: Being upbeat and positive is a good foundation for motivating others. There is solid evidence that emotions — positive or negative — can “infect” others through a process known as “emotional contagion.” So, don’t let employees or team members see anything but your positive, “can-do” energy. Remember, positive reinforcement is always better (encouraging positive work behavior) than being punitive and focusing on the negatives.

Be a Motivational Role Model: A good leader would never ask a follower to do more than he or she is willing to do. Set an example of hard work and high levels of activity and many of your workers or team members will follow your lead. Be the first one to tackle a task or a problem, and others will fall behind you.

Focus on the Shared Mission: Many people lose motivation because they forget about the purpose. A good leader focuses on the mission of the group or organization and gets people committed to that mission. When motivation lacks, the leader can remind followers of what the common purpose is and the importance of the work that they are doing.

Set Challenging Goals: Goal setting is one of the best ways to engage and motivate others. But goal setting is a science and requires careful attention to the process in order to be successful. The acronym is to set SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. What that means is that goals should be associated with specific, measurable outcomes. They need to be realistic, neither too high (so that they are unattainable) nor too low (not challenging), they should mean something to the individual and there should be a time-to-completion. Appreciation of work goals accomplished is a terrific motivator.

Consider some of these strategies that can be used in motivating those you lead. This can include not only work for groups, but groups of volunteers and peer-to-peer motivation with team members should also be something to think about.

This learning is taken from the book “The Ultimate Leadership in You” by Sreekanth Ganeshi. This book is available in Amazon https://amzn.eu/d/bKrWjqG

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