Leading Performance… Because It Can’t Be Managed: How to Lead the Modern Workforce

PART I

THE PERFORMANCE LEADERSHIP PROBLEM

CHAPTER 1

CLARITY OF THE PROBLEM WE MUST SOLVE, OR SHIFTS IN EMPLOYEE BELIEFS AND BEHAVIORS

Employees want flexibility, personal growth, that their intrinsic needs be met, the ability to do work how they best see fit, training and education, a job with purpose, and life balance.

That’s a big list. Many employers will ask why they should be required to do all these things for an employee. The answer is simple: if you want the best talent that will get you the best results, you will have to be attractive to that group of people.

Building a magnetic culture that includes flexibility, choice, and a perception of control must be a company’s strategic priority.

The concept for reaching this goal is similar to what psychologists have taught about managing children. If you tell them what to do, they will throw a fit, be angry, and fight against your suggestion. However, if you give them choices and options, they will pick between those options and be happy. The happiness comes from having control to make decisions, as opposed to being told what to do.

Our employees want options, choices, and flexibility on when and how they do things. We will be required to give clear expectations of the desired results and will need to provide training and support to help them accomplish those results.

Engagement and Training

My team has facilitated dozens of employee engagement surveys in the past two years. The results of every one of these surveys showed that employees desire and need more personal and professional development. However, the employees also said they do not have the time to do this development.

My observation is that employees in command-and-control environments do not have the time to learn and improve because the entire focus of a manager is on workflow, meetings, and production. In a model where managers are focused on development of talent to perform, they would focus on training, coaching, and development of their people and would have greater results. This structure gives employees the belief that learning is acceptable and a function of the job.

However, the developmental model requires that employees have very clear expectations as to the desired results. Employees are focused on results, and managers are focused on coaching, training, motivation, and the tools to get the job done. The employees believe the manager is there to help them be successful instead of monitoring their output.

It seems the difference between these two models of management is that the culture (beliefs and behaviors that are normal) of command and control is focused on work product, whereas the culture with a training, coaching, and development management model prioritizes self-improvement and performance. However, this leaves the need for clarity of results to be put in place—and employees must own the outcomes and results in their job responsibilities.

Picture an NFL team. The desired outcomes are clear to the players. The position coaches are like managers in a work environment. Their job is to coach players to success. They do systems, design plays, and develop their processes after hours. In most work environments, managers don’t have time for people during work hours. All the effort of an NFL coach during work time with players is to help those players become the best they can be.

This shift in the relationship of manager and worker will take purposeful change and a lot of hard work on the culture of a firm. We may have to make tough people decisions in management jobs. Managers will need to have a different skill set to be successful as coaches and trainers of people.

Manager Time and Skill

In my many years of business consulting, I have seen managers at hundreds of companies labor through annual reviews. They spend countless hours sifting through performance systems to determine the feedback they want to give to employees. They seek out ways to be objective. They look through reports. They ask for feedback from others about each employee. They stress about the compensation discussion and about the overall conversation. They hate this part of the job and it can be the most stressful task they perform.

I will argue the stress exists for three reasons:

The first stress driver is time. Managers know they will spend weeks of time and energy, only to return to a backlog of their own day-to-day responsibilities.

The second driver is lack of clarity of objective performance standards for the employee. So the managers are now in a position of having to give feedback that is subjective. This requires a lot of supporting research and thinking through all the potential