Managing Others

Would you like the people around you to take better decisions?

June 29, 2017By Mike Hohnen

Probably.

The better decisions they take, the easier your life becomes. That is the bottom line.

So how can you help them do that?

It’s all about awareness as we discovered in last week’s post. They need help to raise their awareness about their own decision-making process.

How often do you review decisions taken by your direct reports together with them? Other than maybe telling them that whatever they decided was in the good/bad category?

As you may remember, this is a point I have made several times in this blog. We don’t automatically learn much from our experiences. If we did, we would never make the same mistake twice, would we? We only learn from our experiences when we take the time reflect on them.

But in a busy service environment, reflection is not top of mind. Fire-fighting is more the mode we are in. The mantra seems to be: Do something if it works fine; if not, try something else. It puts out the fire most of the time but we don’t learn a lot from the process.

So instead of getting frustrated next time one of your people makes a less than perfect decision, try sitting them down for a chat. Make it clear that this is not a reprimand but a learning session. Use a reverse GROW process as the framework for the conversation.

What were you trying to achieve? (Goal)
What was the reality of the situation? (Reality)
What options did you have? (Options)
What did you decide? (Will)

In my personal experience, the two key points in this discussion are:

1) What was the reality of the situation?
Did they jump to conclusions, or confuse their assumptions with facts? Often it turns out their decision was based on everything but the reality of the situation.

2) What options did you have?
As humans, we have a tendency to stick with the first solution that pops into our head. “Ahha got it, I will do this”. Maybe the first solution is the right one, that flash of inspired insight. But more often than not, that first idea that pops up has overlooked other possibilities.

This is where it can be helpful to explore with them what other options were actually available. It will help them understand that next time, it might be worthwhile to pause for a moment and try and come up with a few more alternatives.

When we do this, we help our colleagues see how their decision-making process operates. Now they have a basis for getting better.

This works well in one-to-one sessions. But we can use exactly the same review process to consider decisions that we have taken together. The key here is to avoid blaming any individual but looking at the collective decision-making process in order to learn from it.

This the fourteenth blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you? You can read other posts in this series on Mike’s blog.

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of is model, don’t forget to check out Mike’s online courses where you will find a lot of great tools, resources and knowledge on Leadership Development and The Service Profit Chain.

Are you an accidental diminisher?

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

In my previous blog post, we looked at two very different leadership approaches: multipliers vs. diminishers.

In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at the diminisher.

So how much output do we get from someone when we hire them to do a fair day’s work?

Well, there is quite a lot of research that indicates that on average, we are getting somewhere between 30 and 50% of what people are actually capable of.

This is also reflected in the Gallup engagement research that shows that +/- 65% of the workforce is not particularly engaged in their work. If you are not engaged, you are probably also not giving it your best.

So what are the barriers for our people to give their best? The top three, according to the research are:

Rules, regulations, and structure in the organisation
Lack of feedback and encouragement
The leadership style of the immediate supervisor

So to put it in a nutshell: If you are not getting max output from your team, it is probably because of you.

Yes, let that sink in for a moment.

That is not because you are a slave driver with psychopathic tendencies, at least I hope not.

More likely your are just an accidental diminisher. Accidental because when you have a diminishing impact, you are likely to be completely unaware of it and probably the last to know.

The first thing you need to think about is your own assumptions and beliefs.

You see, diminishers see intelligence as based on elitism and scarcity. Diminishers appear to believe that really intelligent people are a rare breed and that they are of that rare breed. This naturally leads them to conclude that they are special and that other people will never work out what to do without them.

They also seem to follow a logic that says people that don’t ‘get it’ now probably never will. Therefore, I need to do all the thinking around here.

This is what Caroll Dweck, author of Mindset, would call a limiting mindset.

The Multipliers, on the other hand, have a growth mindset, which is a fundamental belief that basic qualities like intelligence and ability can be cultivated through effort.

Multipliers get more from their people because they are leaders who look beyond their own genius and focus their energy on extracting and extending the genius of others. And they don’t get just a little more back; they get vastly more.
_Liz Wiseman

As we all well know, our assumptions and beliefs govern our behaviour.

So the diminisher typically displays some or all of the following behaviours:

Micromanage things
Do most or all of the talking at team meetings
Have the answers and ask few questions
Be judgmental and critical of others
Create stressful environments that often do not feel safe
Take fast decisions (as opposed to getting everyone buy in)
Drown the team with new ideas and initiatives

So here are a few questions to ask yourself and reflect on:

How might I be shutting down the ideas and actions of others, despite having the best of intentions?
What am I inadvertently doing that might be having a diminishing impact on others?
How might my intentions be interpreted differently by others?
What messages might my actions actually be conveying?
What could I do differently, that would make more space for the to contribute and grow?
These questions can be tricky to get feedback on from your direct reports, for obvious reasons. But what you can ask when there is the right opportunity is: Is there anything that I could do differently that would help you do a better job?

And then listen very very carefully.

Check out Lis Wiseman’s book for yourself: Multipliers, Revised and Updated: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter

This the twelveth blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you? You can read other posts in this series on Mike’s blog.

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