Training & Development

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

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.

SeeBeDo

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

I have been reading “Building the bridge as you walk on it” by Robert E. Quinn. It’s a lovely book. What struck me the most and what has been going round in my head for a while since reading the book is this very simple statement:

“Management is what we do. Leadership is who we are.”

So from that perspective, all this talk about leadership tools and training misses the point. What we need to talk about is what it takes to develop a healthy leadership state.

And that made me go back and dig out some writings by Doug Silsbee. He has a lovely acronym SeeBeDo that reminds us that the way we choose – and it is a choice – to see things, influences the way we are. Our state. And the state that we are in will influence our actions. And our actions determine the outcomes that we get in life.

A simple example: The way I drive on the day I have all the time in the world, meandering through the countryside on the first spring day, is different from when I am late for the airport and traffic is dense in the rain. And the way behaviour shows up comes out most obviously in how I behave towards other people.

I expect that you can imagine for yourself the two different scenarios and the two different types of driving behaviour that are the result. I say no more.

But the implication of this line of thought is that my driving style is at the mercy of the circumstances that I happen to be in. Ultimately, that means I see myself as either a lucky guy out for a drive in the countryside, or as a victim of bad weather and crowed motorways and I behave accordingly.

Ouch…..

I don’t need more driving lessons – that is not the point – I need to learn to manage my states.

The first step in managing my states is to examine closer how I choose to see what goes on around me. The state that I am in is driven by the way I choose to perceive the situation.

Neuroscience has documented this very well; we are what we give our attention to. Whatever we hold in our mind unconsciously influences what we can notice and focus on – and maybe more importantly, what we are unable to notice and focus on. This too has been well documented in “the Gorilla on the court” experiments.

So to what extend are we conscious of what we are holding in our mind? And is what we are holding in our mind supportive of the leadership responsibility before us or is it getting in the way, possibly even hindering us in understanding what is truly going on?

As always I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on this topic. Feel free to leave your comments below and let me know what you think.

Are you the chief employee experience officer?

March 31, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Focusing on the customer experience is the key to high customer loyalty – it’s well established.

That is also why around 70% of medium to large UK companies have a customer experience manager at the level of VP or equivalent. The current buzz-tool for developing these customer experiences is ‘service design thinking’.

So far so good.

But if you’re familiar with the service profit chain, you also know that the key to an exceptional customer experience starts somewhere else. We need to create what we call ‘internal quality’ – more popularly referred to as ‘a dream team cycle’.

So what would happen if we were to turn all this service design thinking on its head and focus more on the employee experience? When did we last sit down to analyse the employee journey as it unfolds throughout the day?

Do we know what the critical touch points are? Have we done some emotional mapping that could help us understand what the possible frustrations are during a day?

What are the learning opportunities? Does this job have varying challenges, or is it just the same thing day in, day out?

This idea came to me as I read Global Human Capital Trends 2016, published by Deloitte University Press. According to this latest survey, 92% of executives listed organisational design as very important and something they will be focusing on this year.

So designing our service organisations from the employee perspective should receive the same kind of attention and resources as we use when looking at the customer experience. Yes?

This leaves the question of who the chief employee experience officer is going to be in your organisation. Will they be part of HR, or will your organisation create a totally separate role?

I would love to hear your views on this, so please feel free to reply to this mail.

Why learning is your key to engagement

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

“When we grow people’s experience of competence, we inevitably grow their engagement”

– Ron Friedman.

A foundational piece of the Service Profit Chain is the dream team cycle: The seven steps that need to be in place in order for us to foster the kind of environment that ultimately will produce the best possible customer experience.

The third step of the cycle, Build Skills and Capacity, is all about the opportunities we give our people to develop and improve.

We all understand that training and development is useful when there is an obvious need to improve skills. But that is just one aspect. The other and possibly more important aspect is that personal growth and development is a key factor in securing engagement.

This is highlighted in the most recent Global Human Capital Trends 2016 Published by Deloitte University Press where 84% of executives surveyed rated learning as important or very important. This focus on learning comes as organisations see learning opportunities as a driver of engagement and strong workplace culture. Both are more than ever recognised as drivers of performance, according to the report.

“Compared to last year, companies appear to be making strides in adopting new technologies and embracing new learning models.”

That is also why in the Great Place to Work or Gallup engagement survey they ask employees if they have had the opportunity to grow and learn in the past year.

Unfortunately we see time and again that not many have had that opportunity.

It requires leadership capacity to provide learning opportunities for our people. It is not just a question of finding the budget to send them on a course. Learning and development happens mainly on the job. (Check out 70:20:10 – if you are not sure you agree).

It is by walking the precipice between our current abilities and the skills just beyond our reach that growth occurs. But that requires that you as a leader must design a path for your people that will take them out on that precipice from time to time. And that includes being there in case there is a need for a bit of hand-holding along the way.

But a first and even simpler step to ensure engagement in your team is to provide adequate feedback. Without feedback, we lack the crucial information needed in order to improve. And when we do not have a clear direction on what it is we need to do in order to succeed, it just a matter of time before we lose our engagement.

You can download your own Dream Team checklist here and benchmark yourself on how you are doing on all seven steps. The Dream Team Questions on a pdf – click here

Dream Team Questions

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The Frontline Manager Makes the World go Around

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Despite the fact that we read stories that companies such as Zappos and others are abolishing the role of middle management, the reality out there is that the vast majority of companies rely heavily on middle managers to keep the wheels moving.

So, unless you have embarked on the experiment of abolishing middle managers, there is a high likelihood that you recognize that your frontline managers are crucial to your business.

Take one metric. Staff turnover.

A controllable cost that also has a high impact on your customer loyalty and satisfaction. It is widely recognized that employee turnover is linked to the management style of the immediate supervisor.

Or, change management.

Whatever customer satisfaction strategy and tactics you are developing – the effort is wasted if your frontline is not implementing according to that plan.

The Frontline Manager is the Linchpin

But, how much attention are you giving the growth and development of those frontline managers?
If you are like most of the companies recently surveyed by HBR, not much.

What that same survey shows is that, paradoxically, the same companies that say the frontline manager is a linchpin in the organization also say that the same frontline managers need to develop a number of crucial skills, including organizational savvy, leadership, and talent development.

But they recognize that not much is being done in the company to actually develop those people – go figure.

The reality out there – still according to the HBR survey – is that most development for this level of management tends to be ad hoc, sporadic, or just too brief to actually make a difference.

In general, it seems that leadership development follows the trickle-down model. Most gets invested at the top; and if there are resources left, they are spent on the frontline managers – sometimes.

So, once again, we have a classic knowing – doing gap. The problem is recognized – but somehow nothing gets done.
I wonder why.
Let’s just recap why frontline leadership is crucial to your service organization. We live in a world of Hypercompetition. Customers are flooded with offers and messages. In every imaginable category, supply outstrips demand.

So, if you are not just going to live a mediocre existence trying to survive, you need to stand out and be, if not the absolute best, then at least among the best.

Your aim is customer loyalty. If you can get that right, you will drive profits and growth as a result. This is the basic learning from the research done that led to The Service Profit Chain.

The best starting point for developing your frontline managers is to introduce them to the Service Profit Chain framework.

If you would like a refresher course on the mechanics of the Service Profit Chain and how employee engagement ultimately leads to profit and growth, check out my free video course here:

A Managers Guide to a Dream Team

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

The Service Profit Chain is a well-documented concept.

Since the original research was published in 1989, hundreds of articles have promoted the original findings which essentially boil down to the fact that happy employees create happy customers – and the happier the customers you have, the more money you make –
Yes, I know that was a very simplified version.

What not so many people talk about, or even document, is that this concept of ‘happy employees’ is not so much a question of employee satisfaction but, to a much higher degree, a question of employee engagement.
So, what are the steps to producing a high level of engagement on a service team?
According to the original research in The Service Profit Chain, there 8 steps in a self-reinforcing cycle called the dream team cycle.
Look closely and you will recognize that this is exactly what the best high profile service companies do:

The Right Team
Careful selection of new recruits. Hire for attitude. Train for skills.Coach for performance and that includes dealing with the bad apples.
Continuous Improvement
Best in class training and development at all levels in the organization. Continuous improvement is considered one of the great benefits of the job. “In this job, I grow”…
Great Support Systems
Service is not just something the frontline does for our customers. Service is our culture. Employees and managers who do not have customer contact service the employees that do. (Our IT department is not the IT-Police – it is an internal service department that supports the frontline in getting the job done.)
Empowerment
The best service employees take pride in solving the problem on the spot. So the freedom to act is hugely motivating. Southwest Airlines famously tells its employees, ”You may do anything you are not uncomfortable doing to solve a passengers problem.”
Clear Expectations
In the same way that anyone who has made it to a great sports team knows what is expected of them, employees in the best service organizations also know what is expected of them. It is part of their motivation to be part of a team that is not afraid to set the bar high.
Appropriate Rewards and Recognition
Focusing on what works, celebrating success, and acknowledging each others contributions makes work meaningful.
High Levels of Satisfaction and Engagement
As a result of Steps 1-6, we generate not just higher levels of satisfaction, but also real engagement – Service work becomes fun and meaningful.

Employees Recommend New Employees
When we need to recruit new team members, our best employees recommend friends and previous colleagues from other organizations because these are the people they would like to work with. Gradually we become the preferred employer in our region – which means we get the pick of the crop.

And that takes us back to Step 1 – The Right Team.
Done consistently this 8-step cycle become a self-reinforcing process that propels our service delivery capacity to higher and higher levels – and we all know what that does for our customer satisfaction and loyalty.

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Building a great service business begins with understanding the Service Profit Chain framework. In my view, that is the foundation. Check out my free introduction here

Potential ÷ Interference = Performance

May 17, 2015By Mike Hohnen

I am a great believer in this simple formula:

Potential ÷ Interference = Performance

Fundamentally, all individuals, teams, and organizations have huge potential. They don’t always realize it – but they do. If they are not reaching that potential, it is because something is getting in the way. We call that interference.

If you don’t feel that you or your team are achieving your full potential, it is probably due to some form of interference.
Maybe you know the cause, but often it is a question of a blind spot.

In either case, you are stuck until we can get whatever it is out of the way.

And that is what I, as a coach, can help you with.