Christmas reminds me of the observation of a highly experienced management consultant from the UK. His name has long escaped me, but his rule of thumb on the optimum span of control remains.
Span of control, or span of management, refers to the number of direct reports a people leader manages. With a larger span of control, the cost of management can be reduced. However, if the span of control is too large, people managers may not have the capacity to effectively lead their people for high performance.
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There are specific qualities that leaders must demonstrate if they want their people to voluntarily commit themselves to action in support of a common cause. The majority of us look for leaders who are honest, forward-looking, inspiring and competent. Consistently these four characteristics rank well above any other qualities desired in leaders.
In virtually every survey conducted on the matter, honesty is selected more often than any other leadership characteristic. If people are going to follow someone willingly, they want to be assured that the person is worthy of their trust.
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My definition of an effective leader is a people manager ( ie. first and mid-level) who inspires commitment, grows employee engagement and work motivation, confronts non-performance and maximises employee performance.
This definition has a lot to do with the research findings from the Work and Employment Research Centre at the University of Bath. They found that one of the keys to managing performance through people is triggering discretionary effort in employees.
Discretionary effort is the level of effort over and above that required for an employee to simply get by and keep their job. Individuals choose to what extent they are willing to provide additional effort, for which they are essentially unpaid.
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In an ideal world, performance reviews can be used as a motivating tool for communicating performance expectations to employees and providing them with feedback. Yet for many managers, performance reviews seem to create more problems than they solve.
Samuel Culbert, a writer for The Wall Street Journal goes even further. He says that it’s time to finally put the performance review out of its misery. According to him, performance reviews are one of the most insidious and most damaging of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who’s evaluated hates it. His belief is that performance reviews are a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a benefit.
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Leadership and management training is provided within many organisations. Leadership skills, on the other hand, are less widely applied. Teaching managers new skills is one thing. Getting them to apply what they have learned is another matter entirely.
With some studies suggesting that less than 20% of training is ever used on the job, it is pretty obvious that billions of dollars spent by organisations throughout the western world is going down the drain.
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There are two potential pitfalls with employee recognition that are worth bearing in mind. A recent business tip on employee recognition from the guys at Results.com has prompted me to comment on them and expand on my post “The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”.
Stephen Lynch, the Chief Operating Officer for Results.com makes a couple of suggestions on employee recognition worth repeating. His first tip is:
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We’re overwhelmed with choice; not only in everyday life, but also in our work. For many people managers, this is a barrier to leading people for high performance.
There was a time when the way you worked was decided in advance and you simply followed a formula. For those people who work in industrial environments that is still the case. But such work is now a minority. Most people now work in ‘white collar’ service work, in which you have a great deal of autonomy over how you do your work and when you do it. This autonomy is even more pronounced for managers than for the people they manage. In short, the choices you have about what you do, how you do it and when you do it are huge.
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In a recent post, The Breakfast of Champions, I suggested that it’s no coincidence that where possible we set up visual mechanisms to display what’s happening or what’s been achieved. Something that people can see in picture form is usually better than verbal or written descriptions of how well they are performing. As the saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’.
This idea led to the development of information graphics, or infographics. They are visual devices used to communicate complex information quickly and clearly. Perhaps the earliest form of information graphics was cave drawings, and then maps came next. In fact the use of maps occurred before writing was developed. These days common infographics include charts, diagrams, icons and stylised human figures.
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One thing many poor leaders have in common is that they are simply not aware that they’re just bad people managers. Frequently they actually think they’re good. And if they’re aware on some level that they’re not that great, they’re often not willing to admit it to anyone, least of all themselves.
It’s all too easy to point the finger at other people. Often we’re unwilling to take a close look at our own actions. I’ve found from the BravaTrak® surveys we’ve run for clients over the years, that good leaders tend to be a little hard on themselves. They self-assess, and they take action to improve in areas where they perceive they’re failing to perform. On the other hand, we’ve found that poor leaders tend to overestimate their leadership performance.
So, even if you’re convinced that you’re the greatest people manager in the business, you might find it useful to ponder on the five signs you may be a bad leader.
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Ken Blanchard is said to have coined the phrase, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” A great line, which is surprisingly accurate.
The reality is that we can’t learn anything without feedback. We can’t learn to talk, walk, ride a bike, do maths, prepare a project plan or do anything else worthwhile without feedback. Unsurprisingly then, Thomas Gilbert claimed that the lack of feedback is a major factor in nearly all problems of low performance. He’s been proved right many times over.
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