Leadership/Management

First time manager – The challenges

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership has identified a number of challenges that first time mangers (FTM) have in common. You can read the full list here. I have chosen to focus on the top one because you could argue that the rest of the issues are all sub issues that arise from the same overall challenge:

Adjusting to People Management/Displaying Authority

The First Time Manager has been used to achieve results through a high degree of control over themselves. They set goals and manage their time and effort in such a way as to reach them. That is exactly what has drawn attention to them in the first place and is the reason they have now been promoted to their first management position.

But the way they ‘control’ themselves is not going to work on others. They need to learn to switch from control to influence And that is a very different approach.

“If you knew how many times I have told them to do that”

But as they eventually work out, telling isn’t leading.

So more than anything, it is a mindset shift. Understanding and accepting that we cannot control other people, we can only try to influence them. And the degree to which we are successful in our influencing will reflect back on how well we end up doing as a team and ultimately that will reflect back on our image as managers and leaders.

So what does it take to influence other people?

First, our new FTM needs to understand that people do whatever they do because it is meaningful to them. The only way to get people to do something they consider meaningless is by forcing, threatening or bribing them. But none of these ‘instruments’ produces particularly happy team members.

So we need to focus on making whatever we are trying to do meaningful to them. One way to think about that is to use the DAC framework also developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. DAC stands for Direction, Alignment and Commitment. (https://www.ccl.org/articles/leading-effectively-articles/make-leadership-happen-with-dac-framework/) That means establishing agreement on what we are trying to achieve as a team (Direction); Coordinating and integrating the different aspects of the job so that it all fits together and serves the agreed direction (Alignment); Establishing a collective desire and responsibility for succeeding with the task (Commitment).

So what does DAC look like in reality?

	Happening	Not Happening
Direction	There is a vision, a desired future, or a set of goals that everyone buys into. Members of the collective easily articulate how what they are trying to achieve together is worthwhile. People agree on what collective success looks like.	There is a lack of agreement on priorities. People feel as if they are being pulled in different directions. There is an inertia; people seem to be running in circles.
Alignment	Everyone is clear about each other’s roles and responsibilities. The work of each individual/group fits well with the work of other individuals/groups. There is a sense of organisation coordination and synchronisation.	Things are in disarray; deadlines are missed, rework as required, there is a duplication of effort. People feel isolated from one another. Groups compete with one another.
Commitment	People give the extra effort needed for the group to succeed. There is a sense of trust and mutual responsibility for the work. People express a considerable passion and motivation for the work.	Only the easy things get done. Everyone is just asking “what’s in it for me?” People are not #walking the talk”.

Now you may be thinking that is all well and good on paper but that must be really hard to achieve – how on earth does one do that as an experienced manager let alone a rookie?

Actually there is a very cool process for that.

I will show you next week.

With a bit of practice this will become second nature to you – and you will see a very different kind of team performance as a result.

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This is the third article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

The big leap… from team member to team leader

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post, we looked at how the first time manager (FTM) is often neglected when it comes to training and development. In this post, we’ll start identifying some of the challenges that the FTM has.

The scenario is more or less the same in most types of service organisation. Due to a promotion or an organisational shuffle, we find ourselves needing a supervisor or team leader on one of our customer facing teams. We are busy. The position needs to be filed fast so our first reaction is to look at the team and see who we have that could jump in.

Who gets promoted to their first managerial position?

And often we find, what we think, is just the right person for the job. The criteria we use to evaluate this are typically this person’s performance. We pick a high performing team member with a lot of personal drive and on top of that, it is someone who is well organised – In short, it’s a no-nonsense person who gets the job done. The underlying implicit logic is that they will be a good example for the others to follow.

And they are good at managing … themselves. But they do not necessarily have a clue about how to manage other people. In fact, often they are distinctly bad at managing other people because they are too self focused.

The typical pitfall’s

They are used to being successful and are therefore determined to also do well as FTMs. Often this means that they either drive their team colleagues too hard or they end up driving themselves too hard as they try to compensate for other people’s lack of performance. And the worst of them do both. But obviously neither works very well and often ends up producing stress reactions in themselves and/or their colleagues.

They see performance as being all about excelling at certain (hard) skills. So their first reaction in their new role is often to look for tools or skills that they can learn that will equip them to do a better job. I see this in virtually every workshop I conduct when I start the day by clarifying what expectations the participants have. Top of the list at each table is nearly always – learn more tools to manage better.

It all about changing perspective

But the reality is that it is not so much a question of new tools and techniques, but more about perspectives. Evolving from a high performing team member into a successful FTM is all about shifting perspectives.

Instead of focusing on themselves as they have been used to, they now need to understand that it is only by focusing on the success of their colleagues that they themselves will be seen as successful.

As I have written about earlier on this blog – the name of the game is engagement. What the first time manager needs to learn and develop more than anything else is the ability to provide an engaging environment in which their colleagues thrive.

Sounds simple when you frame it like this but that is actually quite a big shift.

And the puzzling reality is that most of them are left to figure it out for themselves.

Next week we will look at some more challenges that are typical for FTMs and then in future posts, some ideas and tips on how we can get better at providing the support that this group needs.

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This is the second article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

How are you supporting your first time managers?

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

We have on-boarding programs for new employees, we train frontline staff in all aspects of customer service, and we have executive development programs galore… But what about the first time manager (FTM)?

The first time manager is typically an employee who is doing really well in a specific function. They get the job done. And because they are doing well, they get noticed and promoted to their first managerial position. They become some version of a team leader.

Virtually from one day to the next, their job context changes dramatically.

So what type of training program are you offering your new FTMs, that will help them cope with this new situation?

Well, if you are like most organisations out there, you probably are not offering much.

In terms of situational leadership, it is the classical mistake of assuming that because someone is good at one thing, they will automatically also be good at the next thing we ask them to do.

But being a high performer in your functional area does not necessarily equip you to cope with the challenges of being a team leader – and so the reality is that in many organisations, this is a sort of swim or sink situation.

This, in reality, is a way of playing Russian roulette with your frontline employees because it has been proven again and again that the vast majority – some say up to 90 percent – of employees who leave their service job do so because they do not get on with their immediate supervisor.

But retention is just part of the issue. We also know that up to 70% of a given frontline employee’s level of engagement can be attributed to the leadership style of her immediate supervisor.

So to put it in a nutshell, your customer experience at the end of the day is directly related to the quality of your first time managers.

With this little rant, I would like to kick of a series of blog posts over the next weeks where I will explore various aspects of the challenges that FTMs face and what we can do to best help them.

If you are a First time Manager or have recently been one, I would love to hear from you. What were your challenges and how did you learn to cope?

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This is the first article in a series on how to lead as a first time manger. If you would like to know more, check out other articles of the first time manager series:

I have a new online training out on this: The Team Leaders Toolbox – check it out

Talents, are they scarce or just picky about who they work for?

May 25, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Lately I have been having discussions with clients about talent scarcity. One of my key points when talking about the Service Profit Chain is that recruitment is a crucial step in the dream team process. If you don’t have people with the right attitude, then it’s uphill from the word go.

But then I sometimes get pushback – we can’t find them, they say. There is nobody out there; we search and search and they don’t surface.

I don’t believe them.

Yes I believe them when they say that the talent they are looking for does not surface – but what I don’t believe is that it is not out there.

Obviously, the amount of talents out there follows a normal distribution curve more or less. So there are more people in the ordinary talent group than there are in the fantastic talent group. In that sense, there is some scarcity. But if I take a calliper and draw a circle of, say, 50km round your business, are you going to tell me that within that circle, there are not the people we need?

Of course there are – that is not the problem. The problem is for whatever reason they are not interested in working for you at the moment.

Why not?

If you are paying market related wages, it is not a question of pay. It is probably a question of reputation. Because the fact is that talented individuals want to work for and with other talented individuals.

The worst thing we can do to our most talented individuals is to ask them to work alongside an idiot – it takes away their job content – it makes their workday meaningless.

So if we want to run a service business that delivers extraordinary service experiences, then we need to attract extraordinary people to deliver that.

If we are not attracting the best talent, we need to start thinking strategically about how do we become the employer of choice in our region in the future?

Strategic HR is smart marketing – wonderful employees attract loyal customers that generate raving online revues.

Is HR part of your future strategy task force?

Exceeding expectations… of your followers

May 6, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Your success as a leader is closely associated with your ability to manage and live up to the expectations… of your followers.

We all know that we need to live up to or preferably exceed customer expectations.

But do we also understand that exactly the same mechanisms apply to the expectations of our followers?

ETC

From behavioural psychology, we know that there are three components that are important for humans when they evaluate an experience.

Emotions, trust and control.

Emotions influence what we remember, how we score encounters and the decisions we make. We all have explicit memories that we access about events, and implicit, or unconscious, emotional memories that characterise our feelings during those events. Emotionally charged episodes (both positive and negative) are often easily recalled.

Trust is a primitive psychological variable that is essential to any robust and enduring relationship. Without trust, there is often no engagement, only negative feelings such as anxiety and frustration. With trust comes a sense of comfort.

Control over one’s environment and knowledge of how events are going to evolve are fundamental psychological needs. Research shows that feelings of control (or lack thereof) can affect one’s health.

Control plays out in two forms: behavioural and cognitive.

Behavioural control means letting people have a say in how they do things (autonomy); and cognitive control is created by conveying information about the process or the outcome you can expect, i.e. as few negative surprises as possible.

What do they expect?

So with all this in mind, what are the expectations around you as a leader?

According to Mastering Leadership a book by Robert J. Anderson and William A. Adams, leaders need to understand that there are two sets of expectations: Explicit and implicit.

Explicit expectations are fairly straightforward. They are typically about accountability, responsibility, results, strategy and execution. The explicit expectations may even be listed in our job description.

But when your followers chose to follow you as a leader, they have implicit expectations in return for that followership. These expectations are typically about competence, fair treatment, commitment, engagement, listening, acting on suggestions, and providing inspiration, meaning, and direction.

But there is not a given list and it will vary from person to person.

Depending on how well you understand these expectations, you will influence their Emotions, Trust and sense of Control and thus ultimately their engagement.

How do you know what the implicit expectations are? Well that is exactly the point, you probably don’t. Because that is the nature of implicitness, they are not vocalised because they assume that you know…

So you need to ask.

Meaning you need to start a series of conversations with the people you lead with the aim to uncover their expectations – what do they need from you?

Eventually the goal is to make the implicit explicit, and then you will positively reinforce the three parameters: Emotion, Trust and Control.

And that is the way to generate a high level of engagement!

Change your mind and grow

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post, we looked at two very different ways of seeing the world of work: Transactional and Transformational.

So the next obvious question is why don’t more companies teach their leaders to be transformational?

Organizations have grown skilled at developing individual leader competencies, but have mostly ignored the challenge of transforming their leader’s mind-set from one level to the next. Today’s horizontal development within a mind-set must give way to the vertical development of bigger minds.
___John McGuire and Gary Rhodes Transforming Your Leadership Culture, Center for Creative Leadership

The challenge is that being transformational is not a skill. It’s a way of making sense of the world.

So it is not a question of adding more skills and competencies. What is needed is a different way of thinking.

As human beings and as leaders, we can develop ourselves fundamentally in two different ways. We can add skills and tools to our toolbox, if you like. We often call that horizontal development.

The other dimension of our development is vertical. It is about our growth as human beings. We go through different stages of growth from when we’re born; and these stages are, first and foremost, about how we understand the world. How do we make sense of what is happening around us?

These vertical developmental stages are very apparent when we observe small children, in whom each stage happens over a relatively short time. So, we easily notice the difference.

With grown-ups, it’s slower, and at some points, most of us stagnate at some levels.

It was the Swiss child psychologist, Jean Piaget, who was the pioneer in this area. His work has since been followed-up by researchers such as Jane Loevinger and later Susanne Cook-Greuter.

More recently, Bill Tolbert and Robert Kegan at Harvard, have both worked on grown-up vertical development and what that means in a leadership context.

Kegan describes that grown-ups typically have the possibility to develop in three overall stages. The first one he calls ‘dependent and conform,’ the next one ‘independent and achievement-oriented,’ and the last one is ‘interdependent and collaborative’.

Depending on which of these stages of development you find yourself in as a leader, your approach to a number of classical leadership competencies will be very different.

If we take some of the typical issues that we identify as leadership competencies, they could be strategic thinking, change management, conflict management, and leadership across boundaries.

And depending on where one is in one’s development, one will approach each of these very differently. In the figure below, you will see illustrations of the three developmental levels and how they are handled at each level.

Competencies	Dependent – conformer	Independent – achiever	Interdependent – collaborator
Strategic thinking	– Short-term view – Tactical tasks – Black and white – Either/or – High need for certainty	– Medium-term view – Sees is parts of the system – Sees is some patterns and connections	– Long-term view – Sees many shades of grey – Sees many patterns and connections – Accepts uncertainty as the norm
Leading change	– Change to come from above – Needs and trusts authority to give direction – High need for certainty	– Has own views about best change – Sees the mechanics of change needed – Success is achievement of individuals and teams	– Change is a collaborative process – Comfortable with ambiguity – Success means realisation of a shared vision
Conflict	– To be avoided – Authority is in charge – Feels torn by conflict	– Worked out behind closed doors – Produces winners and losers	– Healthy view together more viewers – Something to be encouraged – Increases learning and performance
Leading across boundaries	– Trusts analysing people you know – Them versus us – Distrust of outsider	– Able to think from others’ perspectives – Horse trades for favours – Focused on success of own self	– Sees the world through others’ perspectives to understand more – Shares knowledge across boundaries – Works in partnership with other functions

If you look more closely at the matrix, you will also see that this is where we find the key as to why we are not seeing as much transformational leadership as we maybe would like.

It’s only at the third stage of development in Kegan’s model, the one that is called ‘collaborative and interdependent,’ that the leader has a mindset that enables a transformative approach — the short explanation as to why this is so, is that, in the two earlier stages, the leader is often more concerned with himself.

The first stage, the dependent stage, is all about fitting in and conforming to the prevailing culture.

In the next phase, independent and achievement-oriented, it’s all about the leader being so oriented towards his own achievement that he risks falling into the trap that it’s all about his project: Better results, market share, new products, or whatever. The leader really wants to succeed personally, often in order to further his career or qualify for a bonus, or whatever. But, because it then becomes all about him and his project, he often doesn’t manage to get everybody else with him. (Followers will engage around ‘our’ project but will tend to disengage if it is just about ‘your’ project.)

It’s only when you, as a human being, have developed to the stage where you are more inclusive and collaborative, have a higher tolerance of others, and are not as focused on yourself – and your personal success – that you actually are capable of inspiring everybody else around you to contribute to what everyone will see as ‘our’ project.

Implementing the Service Profit Chain requires a different state of mind.

May 4, 2016By Mike Hohnen

As we have seen in previous posts, our state is influenced by how we see things – SeeBeDo.

The dominant way of seeing the world of work is called transactional – it’s the something-for-something system – and as we saw in my previous post, it is not madly inspiring.

But what is the alternative?

Is there a different way to look at the world of work that would produce a different state of mind and as a consequence, a different kind of leadership?

The short answer is yes – it is called transformational leadership and what is puzzling about this is that this way of seeing work has been around since the late 1970s.

Transformational Leadership was first coined by the historian and political scientist, James MacGregor Burns in the late 1970s, and was used to distinguish the inspirational leadership style from Transactional Leadership.

It was later expanded on by Bass and Rigio in their book “Transformational Leadership”

“Superior leadership performance — transformational leadership — occurs when leaders broaden and elevate the interests of their employees, when they generate awareness and acceptance of the purposes and mission of the group, and when they stir their employees to look beyond their own self-interest for the good of the group. Transformational leaders achieve these results in one or more ways: They may be charismatic to their followers and thus inspire them; they may meet the emotional needs of each employee; and/or they may intellectually stimulate employees. “

Transformational leadership includes four central components:

Idealized Influence	being a role model that is highly regarded, valued, trusted, and deserving of emulation
Inspirational Motivation	encouraging enthusiasm in others through challenge and instilling a sense of significance while promoting cohesion, harmony, and confidence
Intellectual Stimulation	kindling creativity and inventiveness by encouraging novel ideas, questioning, and thinking outside the box
Individualized Consideration	paying particular attention to the individual needs of each follower

At the core of this is a fundamentally different approach to what work and life is all about

Transactional	Transformational
Homo economicus – humans are rational, and act only out of self-interest.Reward and punishment are the prime motivators.	The integrated human works on developing herself on many levels, physical, mental and emotional.Humans are driven by a need for purpose / meaning and a hunger for development and autonomy.
The transactional manager works within the established way of thinking and does not question these basic assumptions about how the organisation operates.	The transformational leader is continuously renewing the organisation by challenging existing assumptions and implementing new ideas process that question the status quo.
The employee and the employer have opposite interested it a zero sum game, I win/ you lose	The employer and the employee have common or at least overlapping interest and concerns. It’s a win/win or a lose/lose.

There is a ton of academic research that shows that the transformative approach produces superior results. If we then drill down and try to understand what exactly it is that makes this significant difference, two things jump out.

Transformational leadership, more than anything else, creates a high level of employee enthusiasm / engagement.
In a rapidly changing world full of wicked problems – survival, let alone growth, is dependent on the contribution of everyone.

The transformative leader is distinguished by the ability to mobilise all the resources that are present in a given group or organization. And because people feel involved, included, and accepted for who they are, you get a completely different level of engagement. It becomes a self-reinforcing upward spiral.

Because of this, there are better relations and a much better understanding of each other’s perspectives. This also builds a culture where everybody feels like contributing and adding their point of view and ideas without being nervous about being criticized, ridiculed, or otherwise falling foul in the system.

This also means that the transformational leader is more humble in respect to other people and open to their ideas and contributions, because it’s not about the leader as a hero, but about a challenge, a purpose, that we need to solve together.

The transformative organization does better over time – they are much better equipped to handle change.

This also solves a personal inquiry I have had for a few years now: Why is it that some organisations implement the Service Profit Chain framework with a natural ease and subsequent amazing results, while others seem to get stuck.

The answer lies in their fundamental approach to work, is it transactional or is it transformational?

Even with the best intentions, if your fundamental state of mind is transactional, you will not create the kind of internal quality that is foundational for success when implementing the Service Profit Chain.

Your leadership capacity is a question of what you believe.

May 11, 2016By Mike Hohnen

In my previous post and inspired by: Management is what we do – and Leadership is who we are, I touched on the subject that our leadership capacity is linked to the state we are in. Who we are comes out in our character and our character shows up primarily in our interactions with others.

So the way we see the world – what we hold to be true or believe is the foundation for our state. If you believe that people with red hair are more temperamental than people with fair hair, then that influences your state whenever you are interacting with people with red hair. That is a very simple way of explaining it but I am sure you get my drift.

So when we talk about leadership, the dominant existing belief or paradigm around leadership is based on a thinking which is called Transactional Leadership. Its source is Taylorism and scientific management. And before that, the term ‘homo economicus,’ the economical human, which briefly means that a human being is a rational person who only acts in his own interest.

We could also use a simpler term and call it the Something-for-something system.

How the Something-For-Something System Works

Transactional leadership is what happens in most organizations today.

You come in to work and give some of your time in return for a salary. If you work a bit harder, or a little bit more, or a little bit better, you have an expectation that you will also be rewarded for it — a bonus, overtime pay, a promotion, or whatever.

If you don’t work so hard or don’t do your job very well, it is built into the model that you can expect some kind of ‘punishment’.

Basically, you come to work because it is in your own interest. You need the money so you can pay your rent, feed the kids, or play golf during the weekend. It’s a something-for-something kind of thinking which has thousands of years behind it.

Just think of the expression, “work/life balance,” which would imply that work is not life. Today it is the existing paradigm governing our thinking about work in a large part of society.

The Game We Play

If the employer and the employee, or in practical terms, the manager and the employee, have a relationship which basically is about something–for-something, then it very easily becomes a game where you, as employee, try to get away with doing as little as possible while at the same time getting the maximum amount out.

In that perspective, you could say that from the employee’s perspective, you have actually won something if you managed to do a little bit less and still get paid the same for it. This is, of course, even more so in the case where the employee is in a situation where the job is boring or in other ways not inspiring.

The management role in an organization that practices transactional leadership is not very inspiring either, because what this means is that the manager’s most important role is to control whether or not the organization is actually getting the output that the organization is paying for. That means time-stamping, control sheets, registration, serious conversations, the possibility of written warnings, and eventually, the ultimate punishment – layoffs.

In a transactional world, an effective manager is a person who distributes reward and punishment in such a way that he maximizes the output of the employee. That is the bottom line success criteria.

Unfortunately, a lot of research shows that this management style is not actually the most productive. It’s not something that creates an extraordinary organization or fantastically enthusiastic and loyal customers. It produces something that is often okay but rarely fantastic. It’s built into the model that it has to be like that; it is all that can happen, as long as we have that mindset.

Now you may wonder, “But what about all those modern organizations who are offering bright canteens, fresh fruit, and football games in the hallways? Aren’t they doing something right?”

Well, that depends.

Because it is not about the fresh fruit and football games – in some organizations they are offered as part of the something-for-something deal – in other organizations, they are offered as part of a different way of thinking about work – we will get to that shortly.

Management by Exception

In a transactional world, the manager leads by exception. By that, I mean that the manager is actually only exercising their management role when something is not working according to the plan, not living up to the expectations. Only when somebody’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, do they put on their leadership cap and do something… maybe.

Maybe, because as most of us don’t actually enjoy being bossy, the management role very easily turns into non-management – something I only do if I absolutely must.

If things are going sort of reasonably OK, then there’s no real reason to do much, is there? It becomes a sort of ‘let sleeping dogs lie’ atmosphere. And in the organizations that are really bad, the supervisor, who is supposed to manage his front-line, gets this same treatment from his department head, who gets exactly the same laissez-faire management from the division VP or whatever. The something-for-something culture runs all the way through the system. Not exactly an inspiring work environment. Everyone is in the same basic state.

Now, I hope you are beginning to see what the problem is.

As long as we understand the world from a transactional paradigm, the something-for-something mindset, we aren’t going to get any further. We are stuck.

We need a new paradigm.

If we are to shift our state, we need to change how we see work and people in organisations.