More Basics for Successful Management

I recently published a post on the basics of management – you can critique it here.

This time around, Harvard Business Review, as usual, has published a piece of content that is incredibly aligned to the experiences we’ve had in helping our clients improve performance – through strong leaders, engaged employees and cultures that breed collaboration and innovation. (Click here to read the article)

In their recent post, “Top Complaints About Their Leaders,” HBR illustrates a few core factors that frustrate employees’ relations with their leaders. See chart below.

In our own fieldwork, we have seen the same factors as being crucial for high accountability, agility, and sustained performance. At a simplified level, hey break down into:

Feedback – Specifically, positive feedback. Coaching employees is all to often reserved only for times in which an individual’s or team’s performance is lacking. While appropriate, and necessary, coaching feedback that addresses sub-standard performance should be well balanced with positive feedback about what is working well. We recommend to managers that the positive-to-negative feedback ratio should be 3:1.

Why is this? It should be painfully obvious. What feeling would you get as I approached your desk when all you ever received from me was negative and corrective feedback? Not only would you dread each interaction, but I as you manager would be missing valuable opportunities to reinforce why and when policy, procedure, best practices and most importantly you, are successful. Not to mention, If you get balanced feedback from me, when I am in a tough spot, and have to show up frantic and in distress, or maybe don’t give the best feedback, you’ll give me a break because I’ve built up our emotional bank account.

Expectations – Without a clear picture of success and well-understood expectations for levels of quality and standards to be upheld, your employees are shooting in the dark. We continue to see this key factor as the lynchpin for quality, achievement, and accountability.

99% of all employees want to do a good job and be accountable for their results (and get credit for success – see above!). Yet, without an open, two-way dialog in which a manager and employee can achieve a shared understanding of success, roles, support, resources, and the underlying “Why,” it is nearly impossible for an employee to deliver the desired results much less be engaged and committed in doing so.

Based on a comprehensive normed database assessment we use, the charts below show the behavioral difference between employees that do, or do not receive clear direction. Those employees that receive clear direction and expectations (the circumplex on the left), consistently exhibit constructive behaviors of achievement, learning and development, collaboration, and innovation. Those that receive mixed messages and unclear expectations (the circumplex on the right) tend to exhibit aggressive defensive behaviors such as power, opposition, and over-competitiveness - or they become passive defensive, exhibiting behaviors of avoidance, dependence, and over-compliance.

These charts depict data we’ve captured using the Human Synergistic set of tools for assessing culture. With more than 15 years assessing and working with thousands of managers, we can confidently say that this depiction is on the mark.

(Learn more about Human Synergistics here)

Relationships – A majority of the remaining items in the HBR article equate to quality relationships between managers and employees. As we work with engineering-centric organizations we often present the importance of relationships as the following equation:

This reads, “Relationships before Issues and Tasks equal Success." Developing a personal connection with those you manage doesn’t only show you care, it facilitates stronger collaborative interactions and it generates the insight you need as a manager to develop your employees. Relationships help you to know what employees want out of their careers and how to help them get there. #situationalleadership

These factors, as stated in the article, round out strong Emotional Intelligence, a quality that we continue to see these as crucial for achievement and innovation in today’s fast moving environments. While this is simply stated, it is sometimes difficult to practice consistently over time.

As always, we’d like to hear your examples and ideas regarding your experiences. Let us hear what you think!

All the best in the new year!