SHORT
NOTES FROM:
BRING
OUT THE BEST IN EVERY EMPLOYEE
Don
Brown and Bill Hawkins
Mcgraw
Hill (200 pages)
Salsafrica Blog - WordPress.com |
JUST ASK ME
Give yourself
the freedom to not to have all the answers.
Understand that soon you won’t know enough to be the expert. Learn how to ask and what to ask.
What your people want you to know
Leaders as cop
(to police the performance) and as coach (that functionally trains and
maintains the technical competency and interactions of teams) no longer
applies. They are simply not enough. Noe in the new era, people look at leaders as
engager (enabler) to be able to successfully navigate the storm facing us.
Your people
already know more than you about their role, work, and reality on the job. So it’s just about asking them
How they can be
more effective
To adopt the
suggestions they can
To follow
through on resolutions for challenge
Have the
courage to ask for input and look in the mirror. Have the humanity to admit you can improve,
and have the discipline to follow up and get better (Marshall Goldsmith,
author, speaker, and coach).
What your people want you to do
People respond
to what we do, not to what we know.
Knowing might help us understand and accept, but what we do is what
impacts others.
Start, stop and
continue – the good, the bad, and the better.
If you want to get more out of your term and you don’t have resources,
you have to connect your staff to a higher calling of our work.
GETTING READY
STEP 1: TARGETING THE CORE OF YOUR TEAM
What you focus
on expands. What we focus on, think
about, look at, listen to, and involve in, will grow and expand within our
lives. A high potential employee is
usually defined as an individual who has been identified as having what it
takes to move up into more senior roles and responsibilities.
Motivation is
intrinsic. It’s inside of us. It’s very difficult to create motivation in
someone else, but you can create movement in the right direction. Peter Drucker observed that we spend a lot of
time teaching leaders what to do, but we don’t spend enough time teaching
leaders what to stop doing. So, spend
90% of your time and energy in engaging 93.2% of your people and not on the
6.8% that’s in the problematic quadrant.
Free yourself to engage the core of your team.
Potential is
what is possible, what we are capable of but have not yet realized. Initially, the purpose of identifying
high-potential talent was that of helping organizations maintain their
leadership pipelines the steady flow of tomorrow’s leaders.
Allow yourself
the freedom to focus on the top of the curve, find the core of your team. Davis L. Holloway, Southwest Airlines,
describes core team as:
Who exhibit and
demonstrate a positive and supportive attitude, whatever the context
Who appear
actively engaged in contributing
Who exemplify
and inspire others who are responsible for themselves
Who have a
positive effect on other team members
Who populate
the boss’s mental list of employees to be proud of
Who exhibit
every level of readiness for different objectives
Timothy Srock
(Vice president of human resource, McLaren Regional Medical Centre) and Troy
Van Hausen (director of human resources, The Maschhoffs) also has their own
understanding, identifying, and engaging the core of the teams. To them, complexity makes it tough on the
leader, and understanding and engaging that core of the team is essential
today.
Identifying
a team’s core is about establishing the expectations first and then applying
them to the people you have in place, people come and go, but the standard and
consistency is the key to a team’s core,
Everyone
is created equally. But not every role
is created equal. Not every role drives
the same value. Identify those critical
roles that really drive heavy value.
Then start to identify in your core team who really drives the values,
and the secondary roles that protect the wealth. To be effective as leaders, we need to
understand the roles we fill, as well as the people in them.
Identify
the individuals by:
i.
Look
at the product of their work. Core members produce and their output is
measurable.
ii.
Disproportionate
influence. The people who are the core of the team are
the people who others go to. People come
to them because they are strong at what they do, and they’re respected.
iii.
Members
of the core of a team want to learn. Engaged human beings are always looking to do
more, learn more. And expand their boundaries.
The
jobs, the roles themselves are evolving.
The role can move from wealth-gathering to wealth-protecting. We need both direct-to-value and
support-to-value roles. Core team
members embrace the rush, the evolution.
If you want to
create capacity without headcount, stop spending your ‘mental shelf space’ and
emotional energy at the two ends of the normal bell curve. Start leading at the top of the curve, the
core of the team, and continue embracing the evolution of your role.
STEP 2: PREPARING TO LEAD IN THE MOMENT
Your
interactions in the moment are what turn on added effort. You can best prepare yourself to be more
effective in the moment by making sure you fully understand the dynamics of
human interaction by getting to know a simple anatomy of communications. Anatomy is the science or study of structure.
In high-stress
environments, how we approach challenges typically predicts the outcome. Our approach governs where we end up, and the
mind is the fastest way to travel.
Related factors to be considered:
What we think,
especially about ourselves, can intensify the stress we experience from other
sources
Emotions are
even worse when we begin something we’ve never tried before
The law of
cause and effect operates in our lives
What we believe
are whatever dominates our thinking will result in interpersonal experience
that reflect those patterns
Think
positively
Recognize old
ineffective patterns and have the awareness not to give them new life
We are what we
repeatedly think and do
Being engulfed
by a situation over which you seen to lack control can create a strong sense of
helplessness
Improvement and
growth are always gradual
Reframing your
habits of thought about communication in general and business communication in
particular.
The consensus
seems to be that about 70% of who we are is nurture (by environmental
influences, by what happens to us) and 30% nature (by our genetic
hardwiring). In other words, 70% of who
we are is made up of environmentally conditioned traits (hoe our life has
formed us) and only 30% is made up of the genetically inherited traits beyond
our control.
STEP 3: KNOW YOUR COMMUNICATION STYLE
While people
are generally aware that they have communication strengths that govern their
everyday behavior or communication style, they are often not aware that these
communication styles are well defined, even obvious, and they produce specific
and unique profile patterns.
Communication style model will reveal the standard of validity and
reliability which will measure more than just assertiveness and
responsiveness. Depending on the intensity,
communication strength will control your attitude, action, and responses up to
60% of the time.
Understanding
the characteristics of the 4 primary strengths of communication will reflect
how you think, understand, relate, and come across to others thus giving you
tremendous value.
Communication Strengths
|
|
The Decision Strength
(Dominance/ Non Dominance)
|
Dominant or
Controlling person
-
Result oriented
-
Primarily concerned with getting
things done
-
Hard-driving and to the point
-
Dislike indecisiveness
-
Appear outwardly secure
-
Are innovative, venturesome,
ingenious, big-picture oriented
-
Sometimes abrasive
-
Trouble shooters, decisive,
risk-takers
|
|
Non Dominant or Cooperative person
- Non-threatening way of working with others
- Not forcefully demanding
- Seldom impose upon others
- Mild-mannered, composed, and often modest
- Decision makers
- Appreciate input from others before making decisions
- Genuinely prefer input from others
|
The People Strength
(Extroversion/ Ambiversion/ Introversion)
|
Extrovert or
Outgoing Person
-
People oriented
-
Friendly, pleasant, persuasive,
emphatic, enthusiastic, talkative, stimulating, motivating, and optimistic
-
Good mixers and good coordinator
-
Likes to be with and influence
people
-
Are verbal
-
Dracon to others
|
|
Ambiverts (The Center point of the
Dimension of Extroversion)
- Can move easily between seeking to be with others to just being by
themselves to think things over or to communicate one on one
|
|
Introverted or
Reserved
-
Selective in whom they place their
trust
-
Take greater care in protecting
their private life
-
Prefer not to speak without weighing
the potential consequences
-
Are creative
-
Have an individualistic side
-
Tend to be contemplative
-
Enjoy quiet
-
Do not need others around for
self-fulfilling activities
|
The Pace Strength
(Patience/ Impatience)
|
Patient or Paced Individual
- Relaxed, easy going, steady, amiable, warm, dependent, sincere,
likeable, and a good listener
- Likes peace and harmony
- Likes to be cooperative
- Likes to save time
- Likes time to adjust changes
- Their first answer is typically not their best answer
- Simply prefer time to think things over before answering
|
|
Impatient or Urgent
person
-
Action oriented
-
Does not tolerate delays
-
Lack of adequate planning
-
Have a strong sense of urgency
-
Important for them to keep busy
and have others respond quickly to them
-
They learn quickly and prefer
variety
-
Seek out new, exciting situations
that offer them a change of pace
|
The systems Strength
(Conformity/ Non-Conformity)
|
Conformist or Systematic Person
- Will be careful, accurate, precise, thorough, skillful, dependable,
meticulous, conservative, prudent, anxiety prone, worried, sensitive to
criticism, and a perfectionist
- Liking details and systems
- Prefers to work systematically
- Wants outcomes to be correct
- Wants to be fair
|
|
Non-Conformist or
Independent person
-
Generalist orientation to life
-
Tendency to avoid or delegate
detail work
-
Usually are uninhibited and candid
-
Relate well to activities that
take them out of ordinary or prescribed situations
-
Want freedom and minimal controls
-
Can be resistant to controls
-
Will tend to rationalize
|
The autonomy of
communication variables comprises of how we make decisions, our need for
people, our sense of urgency, and our attention to detail. You can tell a lot about someone just by
having the ‘autonomy’ to go on; dominance, extroversion, patience (pace) and
conformity.
Tips for leaders on communication
(from
C.D. “Hoop” Morgan
Founder
and Chairman of Forte Institute
In
Wilmington, North Carolina)
i.
listen
ii.
practice situational awareness
iii.
stop assuming
iv.
not passing judgement without data
v.
developing the ability to adapt with agility
To
be continued….part 3