5 Ways to Optimize Your Leadership Effectiveness

Legendary behavioral scientist Dr. Paul Hersey said that “Effective leadership is not ‘different strokes for different folks.’ It’s different strokes for the same folks, depending on their level of readiness for specific tasks.”

One-size-fits-all management fits no one well and everyone poorly. Inspired performance (meaning that your team is committed and not just compliant), comes from understanding what your people need and providing it for them.

Here are five tips for defining the performance level of your team members and giving them what they need for specific tasks …

1. Understand the task itself. What kinds of traits are needed and what is the process that will make this task successful?

2. Define if the person has the ability to do the task and if they are motivated to do it. Sometimes people have neither the ability nor the motivation to do a task. Take new team members for example, typically, they have great motivation but lack the ability to perform a task. Others have the ability but just plain don’t want to do it and a high performer is likely to do the task incredibly well and will love doing it. Each calls for a different management intervention. 

3. Once you know where a person is with a certain task, define what they need from you. For example, a team member with very little ability for a specific task is going to need a lot of direction around that task – not yelling or condescending, just good, strong explanation and guidance. 

The more ability they have, the less direction they need. Those with very low motivation and little to no ability for a task, may need strong guidance and supervision. Yet, as they grow in their motivation and commitment, even if they still lack skill, a person in this arena responds well to more of a coaching type relationship.  

If they are highly skilled but lack motivation for some reason, just a chance to “vent” may be the answer; in which case, you as the manager become a “facilitator”, not a “dictator”. In the case of a person who is really good at a task and enjoys doing it, they don’t need much of your time – just acknowledgement and an occasional “check-in” to recognize their contribution. No leader should ever take their top performers for granted.

4. Understand that, as with all people, a person’s performance in specific areas may change over time due to a variety of factors, some personal and some professional. Just because they have done a great job in the past, it does not mean they are still performing the same task at the same high level. If this is the case, analyze their new performance level and adjust accordingly.

5. Practice your ability to analyze and diagnose the performance level of your team for various tasks; then work on adjusting your behavioral management style. Your influence style should be based on the analysis of current need for a specific task, not what a person used to need from you in the past. Also, keep in mind that the exact same person quite possibly will need different leadership interventions from you for a variety of tasks. The deeper you go into a person's job role or function, the easier it is to define what they need from you in specific circumstances and to execute particular tasks.

Remember, if you are one of those managers who is of the belief that, “This is the way I manage and that’s it”, you will only maximize your potential about 25% of the time. If you choose to make the effort to understand what your team needs for each specific task of their job role, you will become a much more effective leader.  

Michael L. Stahl

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