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Do you understand the stages that your team goes through?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Team

Last week, we took a deeper dive into understanding how the mental states of each team member has an influence on the whole team – and that the team leader probably has more influence on this than anybody else. If you did not read that post, you might want to start there first.

The mental state that team members are in also produces a certain collective behaviour, especially as there are states that are typical for each stage of the life cycle of a team.

When we put a bunch of people together in a team, they typically go though certain stages. This was first described by Psychologist Bruce Tuckman who came up with the memorable phrase “forming, storming, norming, and performing” in his 1965 article, “Developmental Sequence in Small Groups.”

team-phases-pic-001

So this is not new. On the contrary, it is well established framework and many of you have probably heard the expression “forming, storming, norming and performing” before. The words that describe the basic stages that small groups experience. In theory, this is a linear process that starts with forming and then goes step by step through all four stages. But the challenge in this is that most teams do not naturally follow this path – they need some help or else they get stuck.

What stage is your team at?

So what is important is for the team leader to recognise the stages as they unfold in the team and to act skilfully in helping the team through each stage. Part of this team leader’s awareness also means understanding that the team is basically an unstable system, and that from time to time it will regress from the current stage and take a step or even two steps back to previous stages. And it requires skillful action on the part of the team leader to get the team back on track.

Less experienced team leaders often have an aversion to conflict. They feel it is all important that we all get along and have a nice time. So when the initial phase, the forming stage, is coming to an end and the first signs of friction become apparent, the typical reaction is to reorganise the team in order to stop the conflict from escalating. The deep fear is that this could get really ugly.

The quick fix is to shuffle positions or tasks, maybe even transferring one or more team members away from the team to other teams or whatever. The shuffle causes the team process to reset and a new period of forming starts. And it creates the illusion that the conflict or problem is solved.

During the forming stage, everyone is doing their best to fit in and not rock the boat too much. They are also trying their best to adapt to everyone else. But after a while, the friction invariably starts again. It happens because after a while, each of the team members have had enough, they are tired of not voicing their need and constantly trying to bend over backwards to keep everyone happy and they start to voice their dissatisfaction.

Conflict is just a symptom.

Friction is not a bad thing as such; it is just a symptom that we need to align whatever we are doing better with each other.

The way we do that is that we start a number of conversations about how the team is functioning and what we need to do in order for everything to work better for all. This may mean some heated meetings and possible disharmony, but eventually the skillful team leader will help the team come to an understanding that enables them to move forward – typically by establishing some rules of engagement or a team manifesto. As they do, the team moves out of the storming into the norming stage and after a while it becomes (high) performing.

You need to work on the fluffy stuff.

As the team leader, it is important for you to understand that it is hard to get to any level of (high) performance without investing time and energy in what is often seen as the fluffy stuff. You need to have the necessary conversations; conversations that aim on developing better relations and not just on task accomplishments. Handling this in a helpful way that keeps everyone on the bus and heading in the same direction is not something we are born with – it is learned skill.

In my next online training, the Team Leader’s Toolbox, I will go into much more detail on how to actually do this in practical terms. Because it is not rocket science, it just requires you to be aware of some basic principles about human behaviour and the importance of relationships.

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This post is one of a series where we are exploring the notion of leadership and how this is different from management. Our starting point is the Service Profit Chain and the understating that the management part of our job will only take us so far. If we really want to create an organisation that is capable of delivering outstanding customer experiences, we need to develop an organisation that delivers outstanding employee experiences – and that requires leadership. You can check out other articles of the series below:

How you can help you team manage their states

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Manage your states

Last week, we looked at how teams are organic systems and as such by definition unstable (If you did not see that post, it might be helpful to read that first HERE).

The lack of stability shows up as a result of the shifting states of each team member, and that in return obviously has repercussion on the state of the whole team.

So what do we mean by states?

States are temporary conditions that constantly transitioning into new states. You are tired, refreshed, lethargic, energetic. Those are all different forms of physical states. Or you are happy, sad, exuberant, angry or whatever. These are emotional states. The two play an ever ongoing interdependent dance with each other. When I have slept well, I feel happier than when I just had two hours restless sleep on a plane.

The state that we are in at any given time influences our performance quite dramatically. Just think of yourself and what a difference it makes to your own performance when you are feeling energetic and happy – or the opposite.

But it is more complex than that. Humans are a social species and we influence on each other. There have been made all sorts of experiments to prove this. You take a deeply depressed person and ask them so sit in a train compartment with 6-8 other people for 15-20 minutes. Just sitting there, not saying a word. And then you interview the other passengers about how they feel afterwards and you can register a clear dominance of more negative, pessimistic state in everyone in that compartment. Alternatively, you ask a guy who just won the lottery, became father for the first time or some other major happy events to also make a journey in a train compartment. Again, just sitting there, not saying a word. When you interview the other passengers, you will find a significant level of positive states and optimism in the whole group.

The rule of thumb here is that the person in the group with the strongest emotion tends to affect the rest of the group positively or negatively as the case may be.

Think about that the next time you turn up for work in a bad mood and with the attitude that it only concerns yourself and they should just get on with their work. You have just lowered the productivity level in your team by anything from 10% to 50% depending on how foul your mood happens to be.

So the first lesson here is that I need to manage my own states. That is a whole subject in itself and I will dedicate a full module to that in my upcoming Team Leaders’ Toolbox training.

For now, let’s just assume that you already understand that and are fully aware of how to manage your own states and what the consequences are for your surroundings when you don’t.

Next, we need to look at, that apart from your basics state, you can also be more or less helpfully in affecting your team members states – both positively and negatively.

What causes us to shift or change our state?

At a very basic level, it is about stimulus and response. Something happens and you react (as per reflex) or you respond. When we respond, there is the notion that we actually make a conscious choice. People who are good at managing their states respond.

Many of your team members will just react. And their reactions follow a very simple pattern.

When something happens that is within the range of what they expected, there is no reaction. Their state is unchanged. When something happens that is better than they had expected, they have a positive reaction and that shifts their emotional state to a more positive mood (and of course that has repercussion on their physical energy levels as well). But if something happens that is worse than they expected, they will react negatively and experience a shift in state to something that is more negative with a corresponding drop in physical energy levels as well.

This pattern has an added complication. Our brain is not very good at differentiating between what is actually going on and what we think is going on, or maybe will be going on in the future. So when we have a feeling that this is going to be great – or terrible, we react accordingly even if whatever it is has not yet occurred.

Shift your focus and you shift your state

That is why paying attention to what we are focusing on is another important part of managing our states. When I focus on what I want, what I would like to create, I have positive thoughts/emotions. When I focus on what I don’t want or what I would like to avoid, I have negative thoughts/emotions.

In the same category but slightly different is the sensation of lack of control. Most of us go into seriously negative states when we feel that we have no control of what is currently happening or about to happen. We have this to different degrees. Some people handle a lack of control better than others. But take away all control from someone and you basically have a torture situation.

A good dentist understands this, and explains very carefully what she is going to do next, etc. In that way, she is actively managing your experience and trying to avoid you going into unnecessarily negative states (Because it is bad for business, you won’t come back, and you will tell your friends bad things about the experience).

Also in this category is any notion of fear. You do not want any of your team members to experience any form of fear. Because it obviously triggers very unhelpful mental and physical states. This sounds so obvious, but think of your own career, how many times a week you had that feeling of fear in your belly? How often was it caused by someone in a senior position, their behaviour or words? Causing any form of anxiety in your team is very unhelpful.

So in summary, you can help you team members manage their states by:

Skilfully managing your own states
Avoiding unpleasant surprises whenever you can (Being clear about what is going to happen and what your expectations are)
Being clear about what needs to be done, but leaving the control of how to do it up to them.
Helping them stay focused on what we are trying to create or achieve as opposed to focusing on what is not working or that we want to avoid

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Teams are organic systems, and therefore, by definition unstable.

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Team member

As we continue to explore team leadership as different from team management, we now need to look at another aspect of the team.

A team is also a system. And when we look at it from that angle, we need to recognise that systems come in many forms. One way to look at them is as either mechanical or organic. Mechanical systems are things like computers, cars and factories. Mechanical systems are by definition stable. You may feel that your car is moody – but that is probably more about you than the car. The car works or it does not work. If you stress it, it continues to work up to a point and then it snaps and is kaput.

Human beings – the core elements of your team are organic systems, as are cats, cauliflower or caterpillars. And organic systems are by definition unstable. They are always in transition from one state to another. Humans, go from happy to excited to sad. From wide awake to drowsy. From enthusiastic to reluctant and back again, on and on it goes. The only constant is change.

If we try and handle this instability with just management tools, we quickly get into trouble. The whole principle of management is that we can set up rules, and ways of doing things that can be replicated every day no matter what. Great idea if you are working with a stable system – quite tricky if you are working with an unstable system. Add to that, the complexity that these team members are not transitioning from one stage to another in an orderly and synchronised manner. While A is happy, B is frustrated, and C is indifferent. And tomorrow that may well be the other way round. It just depends…

The instability is not completely random. We typically shift to a new state as a result of some stimulus. This can be a change in weather, a remark from a colleague, a difficult task etc. the list is endless. Here you see the big difference with mechanical systems. Your car does not get sad when it rains, happy when we are going downhill – or frustrated by all the bigger cars on the road today. It just does its car thing in the same state no matter what.

Now all this may seem obvious to you. But in my day to day work as a coach, I keep running in to leaders who are assuming that everyone on their team is operating like a car and therefore have two states ‘off’ and ‘on’.

First step is to acknowledge and accept that this is what is going on. Learn to live with the fact that everyone around you is basically unstable – including you.

Second, if you are the kind of leader who is highly volatile or moody or otherwise prone to dramatic shifts in your states, you need to learn to manage your own states (I will be giving an online course on that in beginning of the New Year).

Thirdly, now that you are aware that this is what is going on, you need to help your team members better manage their states.

We will look at that in next week’s post.

Enter your email address below and we will notify you when we launch the Team Leader’s Toolbox!

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How is team management different from team leadership and why should I worry?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

12984010 - leader versus manager

When it comes to leadership, there seems to be three major and very common challenges.

How to best:

Provide inspiration
Lead a team
Develop employee capacity

During the month of October, we explored what it means to be inspirational. This month, we will explore what leadership means in a team context. December will then be dedicated to the challenge of developing employees.

Just to recap. The basic premise for this series of articles is that management and leadership are distinctly different. Both are required, but somehow we tend to focus much more on the management part of the job and tend to neglect the leadership aspect (read more about this here ). If you are in the service industry, it will ultimately affect your guest experience.

In my view, team management is all about the operational practical and very tangible aspects of what the team does. Tasks, timelines, delivery, budget and all that stuff. It all needs to be looked after or else we really get into trouble.

But good management will only get us halfway or at best two-thirds of the way to what high performance would look like.

What is a team?

Have you ever thought about what it takes for a group of people working together to transition into becoming a team?

It takes two things.

There needs to be a common goal and there needs to be a mutual responsibility for reaching that goal.

It is not enough that I do my part on the team. I must also be concerned how you are doing and if you are struggling I must do whatever I can to ensure that you are also successful with your part of the job. That is teamwork.

It’s this last part that is tricky. It is relatively easy to establish a common goal – but establishing mutual responsibility is much much harder.

In order for that to happen we need DAC – direction alignment and commitment – this is a neat concept or way of thinking about leadership developed by the Center for Creative Leadership. I have written about this before here.

Here is a simple way to evaluate if all three of these elements are happening on your team:

	Happening	Not Happening
Direction	– There is a clear vision of a desired future that everyone buys into. – Team members are individually clear on what the team is trying to achieve as a whole.	– No agreement on priorities – Team members feel they are bingo pulled in multiple directions. – There is lots of activity but not much progress.
Alignment	– Roles and goals are clear individually. – There is a clear understanding of how each and everyone contributes to the larger picture. – There is a sense that this is a well coordinated and synchronised effort.	– Deadlines are missed. Rework required and lots of errors resulting in double work. – People feel disconnected from each other. – Internal competition and blame games are the norm.
Commitment	– Team members go the extra mile. – There is a sense of mutual understating and trust. – There are visibly high levels of engagement.	– Only the easy things get done. – Team members are questioning what is in it for them. – Individuals avoid taking ownership and responsibility.

If it is not happening, the obvious question is what do you need to do to make it happen? Because it’s not a management ‘thing’ – you can’t create an excel sheet or 10 point checklist – nor can you ‘tell’ them that this is what needs to happen.

What you can do, however is provide a space where they can co-create this with you. And that requires leadership.

I will come back to what you can do later in this series. Early 2017, we will launch an online training module that will show you a basic hands on approach of how to do it.

Next week, we will look at another aspect of why your team needs leadership. This has to with the instability of organic systems.

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The something for something system is at the heart of the uninspiring workplace.

October 29, 2016By Mike Hohnen

Unspiring

The Something-For-Something System is what happens in most organizations today.

Here is how it works. You come into 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’.

The assumption is that 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. Technically, it is known as transactional leadership.

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 an 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. That would be a win for you.

The manager’s role in an organization that practices transactional leadership is not very exiting 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.

It’s all about management and there is no time for real leadership.

Management by Exception

In a transactional world, the manager manages 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, they put on their managers cap and do something… maybe.

Maybe, because as most of us don’t actually enjoy being bossy. As a result, the management role 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.

Unfortunately, a lot of research shows that this leadership style is neither inspiring nor 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, 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.

So, what is it going to take?

Well, as Frederic Laloux says, we need to move into a completely different mindset. We need to change our paradigm. We need to switch from transactional leadership to transformational leadership.

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What does it require to be an inspirational leader?

April 13, 2022By Mike Hohnen

The concept of being inspirational may feel overwhelming to some. We tend to associate inspirational with icons of business like Richard Branson or monumental politicians such as Churchill or Kennedy.

But if you did the little exercise I invited you to try out last week, trying to identify leaders who in your career have been inspirational. I am sure you came up with a few even if you have not been fortunate enough to work for someone in the Branson category. Leaders with a lot less punch than Branson can still come across as very inspirational.

So, is the ability to be inspirational something we are born with or is it a learned skill? Maybe a bit of both. It is probably true that for some people, this comes more naturally than to others. But there is also lots of evidence that becoming more inspirational can be learned.

It begins with awareness. Awareness precedes change.

If we can identify the gap between our current skill level and the results we would like to see, then we have the best possible starting point for learning.

So, looking at what it takes to become inspirational, we can start with the very basics. Two things need to be in place for you to come across as inspirational and followership to occur as a consequence.

1) You need to be there.
2) You need to know where you want to go.

Yes, the first step is presence.

Only if you are fully present can you hope to be an inspiration to anybody. If you are distant, unfocused, distracted, frustrated or otherwise multitasking. You not only don’t have the necessary connection with the people, you are also undermining whatever trust there was between you.

No trust, no followership. David Maister has written extensively on how we compute trust in others. You can find more here.

What now?

Try and observe yourself over the next few days as you interact with your team. At the end of the day, rewind the day and think about the encounters you had. Were you fully present? Yes or no? Presence is a bit like pregnancy in that you cannot be somewhat present. Either you are there or you are not.

If you can identify situations when you were not fully there, ask yourself why. Was it your mood, external interference or what? Did you forget to reset you mind and body as you drifted from one meeting to the next? Was half of you still arguing a point in the previous meeting as you started the new one? If you are unsure how to reset your body/mind to a more present state, check out my friend Anouk Brack. She and her colleagues do a great job teaching this stuff.

Once you have mastered being present – it’s time to get clear about where are you going. Sometimes we call that vision/ mission work, but again that can become awfully theoretical and highbrow. I like to ask myself the question: So what are we trying to create?

Think of yourself having a coaching conversation with me. What would you answer be if I asked you: So if we were having this conversation one year from now and you were to look back on the past 12 months, what would have happened in your (department, company, team) for you to feel that you had made some real progress?

If you can answer that, gather your team and have a conversation about how they feel about this and what they think it is going to take from all of you to get here.

Now you have taken a first important step to becoming much more of an inspiration to your followers. At the same time, this is also a first step to creating the Dream Team that is the foundation of implementing the Service Profit Chain.

Let me know how it works or if you have any questions.

And if you have not yet downloaded my e-book on engagement, you might find some ideas in that to swell. You will find it HERE.

Enter your email address below and download the ebook now!

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Are you an inspiring leader to work for?

Are you an inspiring leader to work for?

December 27, 2016By Mike Hohnen

As I promised last week, this is the first in a very practical series of blog posts focusing on practical aspects of leadership: Why is it important? What does it mean and how can you do it?

If you did not read last week’s post, you might want to read that first – you will find it here.

I have over time become aware that many of you find that the management part of your job is pretty clear and relatively straight forward but as for the leadership aspect, it sometimes feels fluffy.

So let’s take the fluffiness out of leadership and make it very practical and hands on.

Over the next month, we are going to cover three main leadership themes: Inspiring others, Leading my team and Developing my people.

So starting with inspiration, we need to understand why being an inspiration to your followers is an all important part of your leadership skills.

Below is a graph that illustrates how the hierarchy of employee’s needs looks.

At the bottom, we have the foundational stuff. Without that being in place, we don’t even get basic satisfaction. This is more or less all basic management stuff that you are probably (hopefully) already doing. The next level, on the other hand, is where your leadership skills start to make a difference and what drives engagement. Finally, we have the top layer – Inspiration which is driven by the style of leadership you are providing.

There are, as you can see on the graphic, two aspects to Inspiration. There is the Vision/Mission for your company, department or whatever. That should answer the question: Are we trying to achieve something that is meaningful? And secondly it is about you. Are you the sort of person that inspires followership?

So why is this important?

Well if you are the sort of persona that likes the fluffy soft to be backed up by hard facts then take a look at the graph below.

At the end of the day, this is about productivity. People who are inspired produce twice as much as people who are just satisfied with their job. If you check out the Gallup engagement scores, you will see that around 63% of employees are not particularly engaged in the job. So from a leadership point of view, there is plenty of room for improvement in most places.

This is a pet subject of mine as you may have noticed. When we are talking Service Profit Chain implementation, employee satisfaction as such is not particularly interesting. What counts at the end of the day is enthusiasm and engagement.

But productivity is just one aspect of why being inspirational. The other aspect is linked to rapidly changing demographics – all the indicators are clear, within a few years we are going to be scrambling to find the employees we need.

In Northern Europe especially, the stats are clear. Soon we will see that for every four people that leave the industry (pension, age etc), only one new young person signs up. That is a disaster waiting to happen.

So you basically have two choices. Try and automate like crazy – but that does not provide especially breathtaking service experiences, nor are they easy to differentiate from the other offerings out there. Or you can choose to create a place to work that stands head and shoulders above everyone else in your region and therefore become the employer of first choice. Too bad for the rest but you will do fine.

So hopefully you now see my point – focusing on what it will take to provide an inspirational environment for your people is a strategic issue and you need to get better at it than your closet competitor. Or if you look at it from a career point of view, managers who understand how to do this are going to be in high demand.

So what does it take to become inspirational? That is the theme for next week’s blog post.

In the mean time, I would like you to reflect a bit on what bosses you have had in your career that you found inspirational and what was it they did? And of course, the opposite. Who were the absolute joy killers and what was it they did that would instantly makes us feel disengaged and lethargic?

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Enthusiasm is a function of your leadership.

April 14, 2022By Mike Hohnen

Helping organisations implement the Service Profit Chain is what I do and have done for the past 17 years. So over time, I notice that certain patterns repeat themselves.

The basic premise of the Service Profit Chain is that the key to profit and growth is to cultivate customer loyalty. Customer loyalty occurs when guests are very satisfied. So invariably the question is: How satisfied do our customers need to be before the loyalty effect starts kicking in?

It varies a bit depending on a number of factors but for now, let’s just use the ultra simple way of looking at it.

The research is pretty clear.

Basic satisfaction does not create loyalty. What we are really looking for is customer enthusiasm. The challenge, however, is that when we get it right. When we deliver exactly the right ‘product’ at the right price on time and in the quality that was agreed, we only get to 3 or 3.5 in satisfaction. And it does not get us anywhere near generating any form of loyalty.

So doing it right is just the first step. To that we need to add the emotional component. When our frontline staff makes an emotional connection with the guest, loyalty is generated.

Now, we cannot put a clause in the employment contract with our frontline staff that they must develop emotional connections. It does not work that way. We and our staff create emotional connections, go the extra mile, display empathy, etc. when we feel like it.

So who on our team can do this?

Our most loyal and engaged employees do this. They do it because they feel like it, not because they are told to do it.

And fundamentally, they do it because they enjoy their job. Loyalty and engagement is a consequence of high levels of satisfaction. The obvious question then is how satisfied do they need to be in order for loyalty and engagement to occur?

Again the challenge is that when we provide a good job, at fair wages, breaks, vacation and a nice canteen. Then we only achieve a level of satisfaction of 3 or 3.5 at the best. Well organised and structured jobs provide the baseline. If we want more, we need to provide what is essential to an emotional connection. They need to ‘feel’ enthusiastic about their job, the people they work with, and the company they work for.

Simple to describe, not so easy to do.

The issue in a nut shell, seen from my point of view having now worked with hundreds of managers in service organisations, is that their main focus is on the management part of their job. This is what gets measured especially short term and this is more tangible in the form of check lists, planning, controlling etc.

It is also what stands out very clearly when it is not done. Not doing the management part of your job quickly gets you into trouble – so we do that first.

When it comes to the leadership component, two obstacles are common.

There is a time issue and there is lack of understanding about what leadership means in practical day to day things they must do. They often understand the need but many of them don’t actually know what it means in practical behaviour terms. What must I actually do?

So when time is scarce and you are unsure what it is you should be doing, the result is simple: It does not get done.

And the end result is what you can read loud and clear in the yearly Gallup engagement surveys, that year after year show us that around 60+ % of the workforce are not particularly engaged in their job. What a waste.

For the next few weeks I have therefore decided I would like to focus on the leadership component. To try and demystify it and translate what may seem fluffy to some people into practical steps that can relatively easily be integrated into your busy day.

If you would like to brush up on the principles of the Service Profit Chain, we have a free e-learning module that you can take it HERE.

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