Finding the balance between coddling and controlling your team
Ally Maughan
People Puzzles Founder & Chair | Fractional People & HR Directors to transform ambitious mid-tier companies | LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2023
Ever since I watched that Friends episode where they all end up at a large palaeontology conference in Hawaii, I’ve wanted to go to a business conference in America. The opportunity came up, and I hastily booked on to The Unconference, a Patrick Lencioni event in Dallas that took place in January.
It is hard to know what to expect when invited to The Gaylord Conference Centre in Dallas, Texas. Should I pack my cowboy boots? (No.) Will I see a longhorn cow? (Yes.) Will I see anyone pushing someone with big hair and a string of pearls into a swimming pool? (It was Dallas. But No.)
I’m a huge fan of Patrick Lencioni’s work (NY Times bestselling author of business fables). Partly because I’m not great at reading business books and all his are stories. Mainly, I think, because the central theme is of servant leadership, of leading being a service and a privilege, and the unapologetic message that being a business leader is the greatest opportunity to influence the widest group of people that you will probably ever have.
By helping people to be fulfilled at work, you are making an impact on your employees, their families and households, and rippling out into the community by helping people to be happy. What a seemingly ridiculous but huge opportunity.
Patrick talked through most of his business models with us: Organisational Health, the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Four Meetings, the Ideal Team Player: it was like audible, from the horse’s mouth, on speed. Good thing they fed us a lot and Corn Holes was also available (don’t ask, it’s another Texas thing apparently).
Performance and Dignity
One model that Patrick introduced to us was the inspired space where a company focuses on both Performance and Dignity – instead of one or the other. If there is too much focus on Performance, an organisation becomes controlling, and it leads to stress and burn out. If there is too much focus on Dignity, then the team end up being coddled, and low expectations become demoralising and mediocrity reigns.
As a manager, I don’t enjoy telling people they haven’t lived up to expectations: I don’t think any of us do. It is really hard. And yet if we don’t do it, we are sending the message to our wider team that it is fine to not deliver. There are no repercussions if you aren’t making the grade. How we do that with dignity and love, especially when we really like the person we are challenging, is tricky.
Asking questions
My preferred method is always to ask lots of questions ‘what happened when….’, ‘what was the impact of….’, ‘what do you think should have happened…’ And sit with them until they are able to articulate the current situation, and the standards expected. We can then agree an action plan of how to move forward.
The responsibility to do this only increases as we become the leader of a more significantly sized organisation. It is never OK to leave this job to someone else, as the leader is responsible for setting the tone, holding the standards, and supporting the culture.
Facing the uncomfortable
At People Puzzles we spend quite a lot of our time helping leaders and managers at every level in the business to challenge behaviour. Because it is uncomfortable, it is easily avoided, yet is of such vital importance to the successful functioning of a business. It has to start at the top: the CEO has to call out the senior team when they are not delivering or not living the culture. Each of those leaders, if it is modelled to them, can then do it for the next level. Often a team needs to get together, agree this is worth the time and the pain, and then get some help to live it day-to-day.
It isn’t easy. The right experts around you will help. I’d love to hear your challenges and experiences of doing it too.
Thank you so much for reading this far! I’ll be writing once a month from my business owner’s perspective on business, people, leadership and effectiveness, so please do feel free to follow, comment and share.
If you don't know me yet, I'm a champion of ambitious mid-tier businesses and helping them to be more effective. I'm a firm believer in not doing something tomorrow if it can be done today, known to some as #TheAllyEffect...
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6 年Some great points Ally. Having these types of conversation always work best when getting the person you’re talking to open up and share as much of their views on what’s happening as you can. Sometimes they open up very quickly, other times it can take a bit longer but it’s all down to 2 things: your patience to listen and secondly, the quality of your questions. Reviewing performance should be an ongoing conversation. Yes you may need to do something more formal once a year or so and fill all the forms etc in but it shouldn’t stop good managers speaking regularly to their team and using these conversations to both praise as well as explore further ways to improve work and behaviours. #management #leadership #performancedevelopment #performance
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6 年Hi Ally, when I saw you last Summer and you said you were going to see Patrick L speak I was very envious. I'm glad it lived up to expectations. My leadership heroes ?include Ken Blanchard and a guy called Steve Stowell of the Centre for Management and Organisational Effectiveness. Both have been leading lights on servant leadership before it was even a thing. One of the recurring lessons from my privileged time as a Vistage chair was how important it is to deal effectively with poor performance and with the uncomfortable, whilst maintaining dignity.?
Co-founder XP Group - Human & Responsible Tech ?? Supporting purpose-led Leadership & Scale. ?? Host Karmic Capitalist podcast. ???? Founder Hope and Play Charity
6 年I remember the first time I had to deal with a team member who wasn't meeting their obligations. We'd gone through the support, the training, the trying to find another role. But ultimately none of that worked. So I took the next step. Which was to sit on it for a few months. I was terrified - we were such a nice company, and had built up a reputation of treating our team well. Firing someone would send an earthquake through our culture. We'd be merciless mercenaries like every other company that didn't care about its team, but only the bottom line. Or so I thought. I got over my own cowardice and had the discussion with him. Eventually. And after it was done, one of the more forthright members of my team told me that they were relieved it was done, because he was making the whole team perform below its aspirations, and they were beginning to think that poor performance was acceptable in my books. The people who leave quickest when they think that mediocrity is acceptable will be your best. The ones who hang around longest are the ones who now know that poor performance is fine.? It's hard, but not dealing with it is disrespectful to the team. Sounds like a great conference.
People Puzzles Founder & Chair | Fractional People & HR Directors to transform ambitious mid-tier companies | LDC Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders for 2023
6 年Also big thanks to?Carl Hung, Charles Tonna?and?Lori Heffelfinger?for making the conference so much fun, to The Table Group, a Patrick Lencioni Company?for amazing learning, motivating and inspiration,?and Mike Snelling for a friendly face by the swimming pool!?