Lead-Down Principle #3
DEVELOP EACH TEAM MEMBER AS A PERSON
When Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric, he famously sought to cut the bottom 10 percent of performers from his workforce every year. That practice has been criticized by many of his detractors, but isn’t it clear why he would do such a thing? It wasn’t to be cruel. It was to try to improve the organization.
Laying off poor performers is one way to try to help the organization. Recruiting top performers from other organizations is another. Leaders are beginning to see that those are not always the best methods for improvement. A few years ago I read an article in USA Today that indicated leaders were beginning to see the value of the solid team members they had who were neither stars nor duds. The article termed them “B players.” It said:
When employers aren’t busy weeding out the bottom 10% of their workforce, they’ve been trying to steal the A players from the competition in a battle to lure the best. But some of those employers are coming around to the realization that failure and success might not lie among the weakest and strongest links, but in the solid middle, the B players . . . the 75% of workers who have been all but ignored.1
The article went on to say that people in the middle are the backbone of every organization and that they should be valued, which I agree with. But I believe leaders need to take that concept one step further. How do you give your team an edge, helping the B players to perform at their highest level and helping the A players to elevate their game even further? You develop them!
There’s a lot more to good leadership than just getting the job done. Getting the job done makes you a success. Getting the job done through others makes you a leader. But developing the people while helping them get the job done at the highest level makes you an exceptional leader. When you develop others, they become better, they do the job better, and both you and the organization benefit. Everybody wins. The result? You become the kind of leader that others seek out and want to follow because of the way you add value to people.
HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR PEOPLE
Before I make a few recommendations about how to develop others, I need to make clear the difference between equipping people and developing them. When you equip people, you teach them how to do a job. If you show someone how to use a machine or some other device, that’s equipping. If you teach someone how to make a sale, that’s equipping. If you train them in departmental procedures, that’s equipping. You should already be providing training to your people so that they know how to do their jobs. Equipping should be a given (although I know that not all leaders do this well).
Development is different. When you develop people, you are helping them to improve as individuals. You are helping them acquire personal qualities that will benefit them in many areas of life, not just their jobs. When you help someone to cultivate discipline or a positive attitude, that’s development. When you teach someone to manage their time more effectively or improve their people skills, that’s development. When you teach leadership, that’s development. What I’ve found is that many leaders don’t have a developmental mind-set. They expect their employees to take care of their developmental needs on their own. What they fail to realize, however, is that development always pays higher dividends than equipping because it helps the whole person and lifts him to a higher level.
When you equip people, you teach them how to do a job. When you develop them, you are helping them to improve as individuals.
Development is harder to do than equipping, but it is well worth the price. Here’s what you need to do as you get started:
1. SEE DEVELOPMENT AS A LONG-TERM PROCESS
Equipping is usually a fairly quick and straightforward process. Most people can learn the mechanics of their job very rapidly—in a matter of hours, days, or months, depending on the type of work. But development always takes time. Why? Because it requires change on the part of the person being developed, and you just can’t rush that. Like the old saying goes, it takes nine months to produce a baby—no matter how many people you put on the job.
As you approach the development of your people, think of it as an ongoing process, not something you can do once and then be done. When I led Skyline Church in the San Diego area, I made the development of my staff one of my highest priorities. Some of it I did one-on-one. But I also scheduled a time of teaching for the entire staff every month on topics that would grow them as leaders. It’s something I did consistently for a decade.
You cannot give what you do not have. In order to develop your staff, you need to keep growing yourself.
I recommend that you plan to develop the people who work for you. Make it a consistent, regularly scheduled activity. You can ask your staff to read a book every month or two and discuss it together. You can teach a lesson. You can take them to conferences or seminars. Approach the task with your own unique spin. But know this: you cannot give what you do not have. In order to develop your staff, you must keep growing yourself.
2. DISCOVER EACH PERSON’S DREAMS AND DESIRES
When you equip people, you base what you do on your needs or those of the organization. You teach people what you want them to know so that they can do a job for you. On the other hand, development is based on their needs. You give them what they need in order to become better people. To do that well, you need to know people’s dreams and desires.
Walter Lippmann, founder of The New Republic, said, “Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.” Dreams are the generators of energy with your people. If they have high passion for their dreams, they have high energy. If you know what those dreams are and you develop them in a way that brings those dreams within reach, you not only harness that energy, but you also fuel it.
“Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.”
—WALTER LIPPMANN
Unfortunately, some leaders don’t like to see others pursuing their dreams because it reminds them of how far they are from living their dreams. As a result, these types of leaders try to talk people out of reaching for their dreams, and they often do it using the same excuses and rationalizations they give themselves.
If you have found yourself resenting the dreams of others and trying to talk them out of pursuing them, then you need to rekindle the fire you have for your own dreams and start pursuing them again. When a leader is learning, growing, and pursuing his own dreams, he is more likely to help others pursue their own.
3. LEAD EVERYONE DIFFERENTLY
One of the mistakes rookie leaders often make is that they try to lead everyone the same way. But let’s face it. Everyone doesn’t respond to the same kind of leadership. You should try to be consistent with everyone. You should treat everyone with kindness and respect. But don’t expect to use the same strategies and methods with everyone.
You have to figure out what leadership buttons to push with each individual person on your team. One person will respond well to being challenged; another will want to be nurtured. One will need the game plan drawn up for him; another will be more passionate if she can create the game plan herself. One will require consistent, frequent follow-up; another will want breathing room. If you desire to be a 360-Degree Leader, you need to take responsibility for conforming your leadership style to what your people need, not expecting them to adapt to you.
If you desire to be a 360-Degree Leader, you need to take responsibility for conforming your leadership style to what your people need, not expecting them to adapt to you.
4. USE ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS FOR INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT
If you have to build a mechanism that is entirely separate from the actual work that needs to get done in order to develop your people, it’s probably going to wear you out and frustrate you. The way to avoid that is to use organizational goals as much as possible for people’s individual development. It’s really the best way to go.
• When it’s bad for the individual and bad for the organization—everyone loses.
• When it’s good for the individual but bad for the organization—the organization loses.
• When it’s bad for the individual but good for the organization—the individual loses.
• When it’s good for the individual and good for the organization—everyone wins.
I know this may seem a little simplistic, but I want you to notice one thing. The only scenario where there are no losses is when something is good for the organization and the individual. That’s a recipe for long-term success.
The way to create this kind of win is to match up three things:
• A Goal: Find a need or function within the organization that would bring value to the organization.
• A Strength: Find an individual on your team with a strength that needs developing that will help to achieve that organizational goal.
• An Opportunity: Provide the time, money, and resources the individual needs to achieve the goal.
The more often you can create alignments like this, the more often you will create wins for everyone—the organization, the individual to be developed, and you.
5. HELP THEM KNOW THEMSELVES
I always operate on the basic principle that people don’t know themselves. A person can’t be realistic about his potential until he is realistic about his position. In other words, you have to know where you are before you can figure out how to get someplace else.
A person can’t be realistic about his potential until he is realistic about his position.
Max DePree, chairman emeritus of Herman Miller, Inc. and a member of Fortune magazine’s National Business Hall of Fame, said that it is the first responsibility of a leader to define reality. I believe it is the first responsibility of a leader who develops others to help them define the reality of who they are. Leaders help them recognize their strengths and weaknesses. That is critical if we want to help others.
6. BE READY TO HAVE A HARD CONVERSATION
There is no development without hard lessons. Almost all growth comes when we have positive responses to negative things. The more difficult the thing is to deal with, the more we need to push in order to grow. The process is often not very pleasant, but you always have to pay a price for growth.
Good leaders are willing to have hard conversations to start the growth process for the people under their care. A friend told me the story of a former U.S. Army officer who was working in a Fortune 500 company. The man was repeatedly passed over when the organization’s leaders were seeking and recruiting employees with leadership potential to advance in the organization, and he couldn’t understand why. His performance record was good, his attitude was positive, and he possessed experience. So what was the problem?
The former officer possessed some peculiar personal habits that made others uncomfortable around him. When he became stressed, he hummed. When he became especially agitated, he sat on his hands. He wasn’t aware that he did these things, and nobody ever pointed out the distracting and unprofessional nature of these peculiar habits. People simply wrote him off as being odd.
Fortunately, the man finally worked for a leader who was willing to have a hard conversation with him. The leader made him aware of the problem, he broke the habit, and today he is a senior leader in that organization.
When you don’t want to have a difficult conversation, you need to ask yourself: Is it because it will hurt them or hurt me? If it is because it will hurt you, then you’re being selfish. Good leaders get past the discomfort of having difficult conversations for the sake of the people they lead and the organization. The thing you need to remember is that people will work through difficult things if they believe you want to work with them.
7. CELEBRATE THE RIGHT WINS
Leaders who develop others always want to help their people get wins under their belts, especially when they are just starting out. But a strategic win always has greatest value. Try to target wins based on where you want people to grow and how you want them to grow. That will give them extra incentive and encouragement to go after the things that will help them improve.
It really does matter how you set up these wins. A good win is one that is not only achieved but also approached in the right way. If someone you’re leading goes about an activity all wrong but somehow gets the right results—and you celebrate it—you’re setting up that person to fail. Experience alone isn’t a good enough teacher—evaluated experience is. As the leader, you need to evaluate what looks like a win to make sure it is actually teaching what your employee needs to learn in order to grow and develop.
Experience alone isn’t a good enough teacher—evaluated experience is.
8. PREPARE THEM FOR LEADERSHIP
In an organizational context, no development process would be complete without the inclusion of leadership development. The better your people are at leading, the greater potential impact they will have on and for the organization. But that means more than just teaching leadership lessons or asking people to read leadership books. It means taking them through a process that gets them ready to step in and lead.
The best process I know is like on-the-job training where people work side by side. Imagine that I wanted to prepare you for leadership. This is how we would proceed:
I DO IT. The process begins with my knowing how to do something myself. I cannot give what I do not possess myself.
I DO IT AND YOU WATCH. After I have mastered the process, I take you with me and ask you to watch. I explain what I’m doing. I encourage you to ask questions. I want you to see and understand everything I’m doing.
YOU DO IT AND I WATCH. You can only learn so much from watching. At some point you have to jump in and actually try it. When you reach this stage and start doing it yourself, my role is to encourage you, gently correct you, and redirect you as needed.
YOU DO IT. As soon as you have the fundamentals down, I step back and give you some room so that you can master it and start to develop your own style and methods.
YOU DO IT AND SOMEONE ELSE WATCHES. The last thing I need to do in the development process is help you find someone to develop and encourage you to get started. You never really know something until you teach it to someone else. Besides, the process isn’t really complete until you pass on what you’ve received to someone else.
If you dedicate yourself to the development of people and commit to it as a long-term process, you will notice a change in your relationships with the people who work with you. They will develop a strong loyalty to you because they know that you have their best interests at heart and you have proven it with your actions. And the longer you develop them, the longer they are likely to stay with you.
You never really know something until you teach it to someone else.
Knowing this, don’t hold on to your people too tightly. Sometimes the best thing you can do for people is to let them spread their wings and fly. But if you have been diligent in the development process—and helped them to pass on what they’ve learned—someone else will step up and take their place. When you continually develop people, there is never a shortage of leaders to build the organization and help you carry the load.
No comments:
Post a Comment