manager

Powerful or powerless, what do you prefer?

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

Powerful

Last week, we looked at the importance of building relations as a basic skill for the first time manager.

Essentially, you are the instrument. How you decide to show up from situation to situation will determine how your relationships with other people are formed.

As the ‘instrument’, you will need to be aware of three things: Your actions, behaviours and conversations. How you decide to mix and match these three will, at the end of the day, determine how successful you end up being in your roles as a first time manager (or in any future management position for that matter).

This week, we explore the first of these three key tools.

What you decide to do – or not to do – defines you in your managerial role.

Leaders who come across as trustworthy and powerful in the best sense of the word are the people whom you know you can trust to act on something when it is brought to their attention. They are in my view the powerful leaders.

Some people have a problem with the words power and powerful. In some cultures, it has negative connotations – and there are often good reasons for that because we have all experienced powerful leaders who abused their power.

In his book Power and Love, which I can highly recommend, Adam Kahane defines two kinds of power: constructive and destructive. He explains the difference as:

‘Power over’ – which is the destructive version.
‘Power to’ – which is the constructive version.

When as a leader I use my power as ‘power over’, it is not very engaging – on the contrary nobody feels inspired by being subjected to ‘power over’ – power over is encapsulated in the response: “Because I say so!” to an inquiry from a team member asking: “ why we are doing this?” .

It is a classic beginner’s error for new manager to get this wrong and to try and bolster their position by demonstrating ‘power over’ instead of focusing on ‘power to’. This form of power shows up when you order people around, grant or don’t grant favour, privileges to team members etc. These are all actions that use to demonstrate ‘I am in charge here’.

‘Power to’ on the other hand is when you use your skills, position and authority to change or create something, to move the agenda forward. You are comfortable distributing power to other team members; it’s all about getting things done and moving the agenda forward.

Leaders who display that kind of power are a joy to work for in contrast to the ones that are powerless because they do not take action but always postpone, hesitate or kick issues upstairs – to the side.

Non-action is also action

In my view, the core problem with people in charge at any level in an organisation, who are not seen as great leaders by their surroundings, is not so much that they do the wrong things but that they are not doing the things that they obviously should be doing.

These indecisions come in all shapes and sizes – from small stuff like: “Would it be possible for me to take 2 days off next month to go to my sister’s wedding…?” and then you wait and you wait and you wait for an answer and maybe you even remind them more than once and get: “Oh yes, so sorry I will look into it…” Or more serious issues like, “We have a customer who is very upset with our last delivery on the phone.” There is a world of difference between the leader who says “Let me speak to her now”, and the one that says “I am busy just now, tell her I will call her back” and you think: “That is what she said last week…”

The worst form of non-action that I know is the manager who does not respond to non-performance. It is in my opinion probably the most destructive form of non action that there is.

Think about it – what is the worst way to insult a high performing employee? – It is to ask them to work alongside an idiot. If you are a highly engaged employee and take pride in your job, nothing ruins your motivation and engagement as much as watching someone work alongside you that makes a mess of the product, the customer relation or whatever. Someone who ultimately does not care the way you care.

The powerless manager will come up with excuses – “Yes, I know Joe is not quite up to snuff but that is all we can get just now, so please suffer him for now and we will get it sorted out eventually.” – but they seldom do. Because if someone is not doing what they are supposed to be doing, it is time for a powerful conversation – and there is no reason to postpone it.

Everyone on your team needs to know that if things are not going according to plan, you will act – not as tyrant spewing blame all over the show – but you will act because you care and you will sort it out – you will be asking questions, trying to understand why we are not on track and then you will take appropriate action.

Why can it be hard to take action – well you could take the wrong action and stand there with egg all over you face. So non action is often a result of a fear of being wrong. But as leaders, we need to get over the fear of being wrong. We will be wrong from time to time and that is not a problem as long as we acknowledge it and try to improve. Perfect leaders do not exist.

Think about it, whom would you personally prefer to work for, the leader who acts and makes mistake – and is prepared to acknowledge them, or the leader who does not act but also never seems to do wrong because they push those decisions up the system instead of taking responsibility for their own actions?

Next week, we will look more closely at the second tool at your disposal – your behaviour.

__________________________________________________________

This is the sixth 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 your relationships affect your results

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

Relations

In our continuing series on how to lead a team as a first time manager, I would like to focus on the importance of relations.

Last week, we briefly touched on this when we worked through the high performance team model.

The second step in that process – the who part – is all about relations.

Daniel H. Kim the systems thinker has illustrated this in a very elegant way.

Leading my Team

So we have a fundamental choice here. And it can go one of two ways.

We can generate an upward spiral where we are continuously developing our relations and, as a result, performing better and better; or we can take the downward spiral where it all just gets worse and worse.

It is a choice.

A choice that is going to determine whether the team is going to be successful or not and, ultimately, it’s going to determine whether you are successful in your role as a team leader.

For the first time manager, this sometimes comes as a surprise and we think, “I have a gazillion other things to do. Do I also have to think about that, I just want to get the job done?”

And the next thought is maybe, ‘but what do we mean by relations exactly?’. This is where the first time manger can make a classical and very costly mistake.

Relationship is not about trying to please everyone. A relationship is about mutual expectations and that is something very different.

I like Ed Schein’s definition of a relationship:

“A relationship is a set of mutual expectations about each other’s future behaviour based on past interactions with each other.”

So you have a relationship with someone when you can more or less predict some of their behaviours and vice versa. Relationships go both ways, otherwise they are not relationships.

But we have relationships of different depths with other people. They can be shallow, meaning that both of us have a vague sense of what the other person will do; or at the other end of the spectrum, they can be deep to the extent that we almost know what the other person thinks and feels in most situations.

A good, solid work relationship means that we feel a certain level of comfort with each other, we have a good understanding of how the other will react and we are well aligned with respect to whatever goal or project we are working on.

That kind of comfortable relationship we often summarise in one small word: trust.

But in order for me to determine how much to trust you and how open I can expect you to be with me, we must have a history.

We judge our relationships on past interactions, and we are usually very observant of these first interactions because we use them as a test – and the result of the test feed into our conclusions on how this relationship works.

In practical terms, this means that as a first time manager, you will need to invest time and effort in building these relationships. And when doing so, you have three basic tools at your disposal:

Your actions, your behaviours and your conversations.

In our next post, we will look closer at these three relationship building instruments.

___________________________________________________

This is the fifth 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

Direction, Alignment & Commitment in 4 easy steps

January 26, 2019By Mike Hohnen

Last week, I introduced you to DAC (Direction, Alignment and Commitment), the leadership concept developed by The Center for Creative Leadership and we looked at how that can be a useful way for the first time managers (FTM) to understand what they need to focus on from a leadership perspective. In fact, this does not just apply to First Time Managers, a lot of seasoned managers could benefit from applying this thinking as well. But that is another story.

So just to recap, DAC stands for Direction, Alignment and Commitment. If you did not read my previous blog post, you can find it here. This framework is not something that one person (the leader) tells everyone to do; on the contrary, establishing DAC is a process. It happens as a result of a two-way exchange with everyone on the team. It is co-created so to speak, but often initiated by the leader.

So that is the theory we covered in the previous blog post, but if you are a newly appointed manager, you may very well be thinking: “This makes sense but where do I begin?”

It is actually not as tricky as it may seem at first. There is a tool for this. And if you can integrate it into your basic approach to leadership, you will go far. I promise.

The high Performance Model

The tool or approach is called the Drexler/Sibet high performance model; named after the two gentlemen who created it. The idea combines two schools of thought: Behavioural psychology and process theory.

From behavioural psychology, we learn that whenever humans are put in a new situation, a new project or a new workgroup or maybe just a new workday, they ask themselves 4 fundamental questions:

Why are we doing this?
Who am I going to do it with?
What are we going to do?
How are we going to do it?

And they ask them in exactly that sequence.

The first question is quite subconscious, a sensing. The second question is more of a feeling and the last two questions are more thinking questions. But it is hard for us to move meaningfully forward to the next question if the previous question has not been answered clearly for us.

From process theory, we know that processes follow an oscillating pattern. They move in regular ‘Waves’ from one extreme point to its opposite and then back again. Human group processes the two extremes, which are often insecurity/uncertainty to security/certain.

When we combine these two, we get the Drexler/Sibet high performance model and it looks like this:

The first step is all about orientation. Establish a clear purpose and meaning with whatever it is we are about to do.

Who is on this team and do they know each other or not?

If not, we need to find a way to break the ice and let people get to know each other. We are wired in our brains to be slightly distrustful of people we do not know. It is a basic survival precaution that dates back to our cave origins. If we are going to collaborate on a job/project, we need a minimum of trust. We start to build trust as we get to know each other. It is very simple.

If we know each other on the team, we need to check in. Just a quick round. How are we all feeling in general and what are maybe our expectations for this job or venture or day? This is all about what Blanchard (Situational Leadership) would call our psychological readiness level.

Then we need to agree on the goals and roles. What are we trying to achieve and what roles do we each have that will contribute to us achieving this?

And finally, we need to have a discussion and establish agreement, so how are we going to approach this?

Once we have been through these first four fundamental steps, we arrive at the bottom of the V model a point where we all have clarity and certainty about what we are about to embark on.

As the leader, you have now done 90% of your work. You have set direction, alignment and commitment. Lean back and let them decide the details of (tasks and timeframes, etc.) how they are going to do it. That will be quite easy if we have done the ground work well.

Observe and offer guidance only if needed as they execute, and only when they are done do you step back in and facilitate a reflection, so how did it go? What did we learn and what would we do different next time? You can see my previous post on goal grids and learning for more on this.

___________________________________________________

This is the fourth 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

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.

___________________________________________________

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.

_______________________________________________________

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?

____________________________________________________

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