What is the key to Frontline Leadership – in one word?

By James Brava | December 29, 2009

keys3Relationships.

There it is. That’s your lot. For frontline managers, leadership is about relationships. Period.

If you’d like more than one word, stick around. Let me expand.

The difference between leadership at a senior management level and at a frontline management level is that one is strategic and the other is tactical.

For frontline managers, tactical leadership is simply about influencing and motivating others to perform valued work activities that generate desired results. Influencing their team members to undertake specific work activities which maximise productivity. And motivating team members to provide discretionary effort over and above the minimum required.

Nearly all jobs require employees to make choices about their work, such as the pace at which they work, how they do it and how well it’s done. The extent to which they choose to do more than the minimum requirement dictates their level of productivity or performance and is referred to as ‘discretionary effort’.

Increased discretionary effort is a direct predictor of improved performance. As such it is the only way an organisation can maximise performance. Consequently, organisations that can trigger valued discretionary behaviour from their employees do better than others. And the key to triggering this discretionary effort is the relationship the team member has with their frontline manager.

Taking this further, relationships are made and broken through the quality of interaction and communication. Improve the quality and frequency of communication and interaction and the relationship is strengthened, which leads to an improved ability to influence and motivate. Decrease the quality and frequency of communication and interaction, and the opposite is ensured.

All that is then left for frontline leaders to know is what frequency of interaction works best, and to understand how quality communication looks, sounds and feels.

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Thanks Christ

By James Brava | December 22, 2009

christIt is that time of year. The season to again reflect on the life, teachings and leadership of Jesus Christ.

Leadership is the process of influence. The process of influencing the thinking and the behaviour of others for worthwhile achievement. Jesus Christ has been one of the few people in the history of the world who have had a dramatic and long-term influence on hundreds of millions of people. Which places him as one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen, heard and experienced.

Jesus held a clear vision of who he was, where he was going and where he was trying to take his followers. And when he called his disciples to follow him, he gave them the support and guidance they required to develop into ‘fishers of men’. These are all key leadership practices.

Yet it was the message that Christ brought us, and lived, which is the major source of his influence.

As Neale Donald Walsch, author of the Conversations with God books, puts it, “The grandest teaching of Christ was not that you shall have everlasting life, but that you do; not that you shall have brotherhood in God, but that you do; not that you shall have whatever you request, but that you do. All that is required is to know this. For you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up in no other way for you than that way in which you think it will.”

Christ was very clear on this teaching. For which I am most thankful.

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Is your coaching approach failing both you and your people?

By James Brava | December 14, 2009
Photo: Julie Elliot-Abshire

Photo: Julie Elliot-Abshire

Why is coaching so important? Well, the Sales Executive Council’s research has revealed a strong, positive correlation between coaching effectiveness and (a) the performance of average (or core) performers (as much as 17% improvement), (b) high-performer retention, and (c) high and average performers’ willingness to work harder. Pretty impressive stuff!

If that is the case, how could you go wrong? Unfortunately very easily.

I work with many different organisations. Many of them are keen to ensure that their supervisors, team leaders and managers are busy coaching their people to improve their performance. What’s interesting is that in most organisations the word ‘coaching’ frequently refers to one activity, one approach, one way of doing things. Yet by taking this approach, these organisations fail their people, their managers and their shareholders.

The thing to realise is that coaching is situational. So you need different coaching approaches depending on the situation you are dealing with and the outcome you desire. Here are the basic coaching approaches you need in your arsenal.

  1. To grow performance, use positive reinforcement In the workplace, positive reinforcement can best be describes as informal, immediate and specific positive feedback from a knowledgeable source. It was confirmed by the Corporate Leadership Council’s global research in 2002 as the “single most effective performance management lever available”. This approach is typically used informally during day-to-day coaching conversations.
  2. To confront performance problems, use corrective feedback
    This is a positive and supportive approach for confronting performance problems. It enables frontline leaders to easily address performance problems before they become a significant issue.
  3. For developing skill, use skills coaching
    Based on the Effective Behavioural Coaching model, this coaching approach has been shown to be up to 300% more effective at developing skill than conventional coaching methodologies. This approach would typically be used on a weekly or fortnightly basis in situations where on-job skill development is required.
  4. To coach people resistant to change, use coaching resistant performers
    This coaching approach is a more serious conversation for team members who are resistant to make a required change in their behaviour. The conversation can be an intermediary step between corrective feedback and performance management.
  5. To develop, guide and mentor people, use the GROW conversation
    This coaching conversation is focused on asking effective questions to mentor, lead and build awareness and responsibility in the person being coached. This longer conversation is typically used during performance reviews and monthly one-on-ones.

Coaching is a way of motivating and creating engaged employees, and is particularly effective in turning average performers into high performers.  The untapped potential lying dormant in your frontline employees is staggering.  Coaching is a powerful tool to harness this potential for the overall benefit of organisational performance, provided you take the time to apply the right technique for the situation you face and the outcome you are seeking.

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Why your coaching may not be working

By James Brava | December 7, 2009

It seems like everyone is talking about coaching in business these days, and perhaps with good reason. In their 2005 Strategic Research Findings, the Sales Executive Council identified that teams not receiving coaching under perform by a significant margin. On the other hand, teams that report receiving more than three hours of coaching per month exceed their goals by 7% on average.

The report went further to identify that managers repeatedly under perform in the critical skill area of coaching their people. So, let’s explore one of the reasons this might be a problem.

To understand what works in terms of where to put your time and energy in coaching, consider a performance distribution curve. Arguably, across any organisation about 15% of people could be termed high performers, about 70% could be termed average performers and the bottom 15% low performers. It is now acknowledged that the opportunity for maximising organisational productivity lies in lifting the performance of your average performers, since they are not yet performing to their capacity and they make up the majority of your people.

In terms of coaching, conventional wisdom says to focus on our high-performers. They’re the people delivering for us so we want that to continue and we want to retain these people. However, most managers spread their coaching time equally across all of their team members. They don’t differentiate between their high, average and low performers.

What works best is something different again. If the opportunity to maximise productivity lies with our average performers, then the place we should spend most of our coaching time is with them. On the other hand we want to retain our high performers and continue to encourage their willingness to work hard, so we have to continue to spend some time with them.

Except for new, high potential team members, there is no evidence to suggest that spending coaching time with low performers delivers a substantial return on investment.

So, stop treating your people all the same. You have limited time to coach your people. Use it wisely by spending most of that time with your average performers.

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5 steps to better Frontline Leadership

By James Brava | November 29, 2009

five_stepsMoving to a leadership rather than management style for frontline managers is one that requires significant top down support. This enables the behaviour change that is required for them to succeed. If there were only five key points I had to choose for frontline leaders to consider, they would be:

.

  1. Prepare yourself
    Analyse what’s working and what isn’t in your leadership of your team. When you are clear on what needs to stay you can look at replacing unprofitable tasks, like spending too long on administration and email, with effective Frontline Leadership activity.
  2. Develop a critical behaviour checklist
    When you pay attention to the activity of your top performers, you will notice there is a theme to how they continually do better than your average performers. Remarkably this often comes down to consistency of critical work behaviours. While average performers may show these behaviours sometimes, high performers use them consistently.
  3. Coaching – more than managing by results
    Many frontline managers may look at this point and think they have this under control. Look again. How are you coaching? Is it on a results basis? If it is you need to rethink your coaching approach. Coaching that is effective for your average performer must be behavioural based. Coach and reinforce the critical work behaviours consistently.
  4. Balanced feedback
    Look at how you are giving your feedback. If you are like the majority of managers your feedback will likely contain equal doses of both corrective and positive feedback. If you can switch that ratio to be more strongly focussed on using positive feedback to reinforce the critical work behaviours you are trying to instil, you will create much more success for both your people and for yourself.
  5. Practice, practice, practice

    I don’t know if it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert, but I do know if you practice at anything you will get better. Frontline Leadership skills are no different. In fact, I’d go as far as saying that consistency is the key to success. Keep at this day in and day out and you will quickly build high levels of trust, employee engagement and performance in your team.

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Building morale and motivation

By James Brava | November 16, 2009

Creating a vibrant team that is motivated with high morale can be a daunting a task.  Sometimes it’s a task that can seem nearly impossible, especially if your people are disengaged with their work and the organisational culture.

For frontline managers the task of creating good morale and motivated, engaged employees can seem even harder than other areas of the business.  This is because the nature of frontline employees work is usually prone to repetitive tasks with little autonomy or sense of control over their work.

In a call centre for example, even the ‘not ready’ time is recorded and analysed as an area that could use constant improvement.  For some people it’s readily accepted as a challenge to keep their not ready time to a minimum but this is generally the high performers.  For your average performer, your core people, this doesn’t inspire or motivate.  But what does?

Unfortunately there isn’t a magic bullet solution.  The key to developing high performing frontline teams that are motivated and engaged is largely to do with frontline leadership skills of the team leaders.  Team leaders in turn need to be supported and coached by their direct managers to enable these skills to be developed overtime.

Frontline leadership skills cannot be developed in a vacuum.  One centre manager I have worked with described it as a change in the way business is done from the top down.  Without the top down support the change doesn’t carry the weight necessary to ensure the attention of frontline employees, they think of it as just another passing management fad.

Frontline leadership skills need to become indoctrinated in how business is conducted on a daily basis.  Without total commitment to the change from frontline management to leadership it is too easy to slip back into old habits that only motivate a minority.

A relentless approach to an established frontline leadership methodology allows sustainable change and sustainable improvements over time.  Frontline leadership isn’t just a ‘flash in the pan’, it’s a new way of doing business that enables, empowers and gets the best from people in a genuine manner.  The resulting sustainable improvements to the bottom line are the key to moving your organisation to the next level.

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How does leadership apply to frontline managers?

By James Brava | November 10, 2009

The term frontline leadership is starting to be heard of more and more in management circles and gradually in the media. What does it mean and how do leadership skills apply to frontline managers?

Going hand in hand with frontline leadership is another term that is gaining considerable popularity as the holy grail for organisations – that of employee engagement. If you can develop effective frontline leadership one of the major positive impacts is employee engagement. Your frontline people are motivated to go the extra mile, they strive to do their best and they get results.

Leadership skills such as communicating the big picture and coaching are increasingly important in frontline leaders. Some frontline leaders I work with spend up to half their time coaching their teams. The other half is devoted to more traditional management operations, getting through the paperwork and going to meetings.

Leadership skills that are particularly relevant to frontline leaders also include feedback and how to deliver both positive and balanced feedback. This factor alone can make a measureable difference in employee motivation and their openness to change.

Leaders used to be just the top tier, the senior managers. But those leaders in turn need to enable the next level to become leaders in their own right. By providing the appropriate support frontline leaders will become far more than just communicators of the top down. They are empowered to make their own decisions and policies. They tap into a greater sense of creativity and create unity amongst their teams.

Frontline leaders are the key to motivating your people and developing employee engagement. Provide your frontline leaders with the skills and routines to be effective at their jobs and watch the results for your organisational performance improve.

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Effective frontline leadership skills boost productivity

By James Brava | November 2, 2009

Trying to boost productivity through a management by results style only works well for your high performers – the people who are already running at capacity.  Pushing them further will only serve to burn them out.  It’s far more effective to focus on your average performer, the people in your team who seem to do OK, who do enough to get by,  but not a lot else.  These are also the people who make up the majority of your team.

It’s these average or core performers where there is considerable potential that lies dormant due to a management approach that just doesn’t work for them.  But what does work?

Leadership rather than management is what works.  We hear these terms bandied about quite frequently in performance management circles, but what are the implications for frontline leaders, their managers and their people?

Leadership is a more intuitive approach and requires less time behind the desk and more face to face.  There is no space here for paper pushers!  Leaders know the big picture and include their people in what this means for them.  They know what critical behaviours are required to succeed at the agreed goals.  They know how to coach their people to achieve those critical behaviours by providing balanced feedback that cushions corrective feedback with high levels of positive feedback.

This last point needs a little more dwelling on.  Positive feedback isn’t about saying “good job”.  It is far more than an acknowledgement.  In reality, the only purpose of any form of positive feedback or recognition is to reinforce, or strengthen, the behaviour that you are recognising. In order to achieve this, the recognition needs to be as immediate as possible, and very specific. When this happens, your people will start to put in more discretionary effort which will lead to higher productivity.

Frontline leaders know what needs to happen.  They include their people in setting fair goals and measure them according to their agreed metrics.  There are no surprises because these metrics are available on a daily and weekly basis.  The frontline leader is aware of any discrepancies before they can become an issue.

Frontline leaders reinforce and recognise achievement of goals and critical behaviours through some kind of peer recognition.  This doesn’t need to be expensive and is better to be more of a gimmick than monetary rewards.  The point isn’t the prize but the peer recognition.

Does this look like your organisation?  If not, you have an opportunity awaiting you, one that holds the key to employee engagement and motivation.

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Learning to give effective feedback

By James Brava | October 27, 2009

Providing feedback is a funny thing. You’d think it would be straightforward, but rather it’s a prickly nest of thorns. It’s delicate. Get it wrong and your employees become demotivated. But get it right and you open up one of the keys to employee engagement and motivated employees.

So, feedback is important. It’s how we learn. However, most managers aren’t skilled at providing performance feedback. International research has identified two important success factors for people managers – coaching and motivating people. Of the skills involved in these success factors, research consistently shows that employees rate their managers lowest on providing feedback.

Do you give effective feedback? The best place to start when you ponder this question is to think about what effective feedback looks like. And what it looks like is both consistent and balanced.

If your feedback is balanced in giving both corrective and positive, then yes, you are on the right track. The correctional feedback is more likely to be actioned in a balanced feedback environment. This is because people know that you are supportive of them because you notice when they are on-track as well as off-track.

If your people are constantly bombarded with correctional feedback then it weighs them down. They are less likely to action it as they become closed off to change –thinking ‘what’s the point, I don’t do anything right anyway’.

The power of giving balanced feedback is becoming essential part of frontline leadership skills. It not only reinforces the critical behaviours and actions an employee needs to reach their goals, but it also means they are more open to improving their performance when the opportunity arises.

I have worked with frontline leaders for over a decade and have found that the ratio is approximately four or more positive comments to every correctional comment. The key to both kinds of feedback is that it is, behaviourally specific (rather than judgemental), and accurate.

For example, when you notice an employee doing something right your conversation should go something like: “Great work Sarah, I noticed when you were talking with that last customer you discussed with them the benefits of moving up to our premium software package. In particular, I really liked the way you identified that this package would enable them to save money by replacing their current time recording system.”

Giving balanced feedback takes practice and time. You need to be out there making sure you have significant face time with your team everyday, so you have the opportunity to see what’s going on and coach through the behaviours.

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The importance of building trust in your frontline employees

By James Brava | October 19, 2009

It’s hard to go past old fashioned values like integrity, honesty and trust. Sadly these are becoming increasingly hard to find in many organisations, and increasingly hard for employees to give.

The question you might reasonably ask is, is the concept of building trust within your organisation something you should even care about? The simple answer is yes, because simply put, it affects your bottom line. For example, Australasian research by the company JRA shows that ‘engaged’ employees generate a return on assets 95 per cent higher than their less engaged workforce counterparts, generate sales per employee 68 per cent higher and are 29 per cent more likely to stay with their organisation. These are staggering figures.

Other international research by organisations such as Towers Perrin has further demonstrated the link between employee engagement and sustainable improvement in bottom line performance. The research shows ‘engaged’ employees directly affect key business measures, such as lower absenteeism and staff turnover, and higher productivity, operating margins, profitability, customer engagement and growth in earnings per share.

Employees that don’t have trust in their manager and their organisation are not engaged employees. As a result, six in ten employees can be regarded as ‘ambivalent’, while one in ten can be described as ‘disengaged’, or detached from their work. They’re often demotivated and they’re only doing just enough work to get by.

An engaged employee is one who is willing and able to mentally, emotionally and physically apply themselves at work and contribute to organisational success. It is the extent to which employees put discretionary effort into their work, effort that goes beyond the required minimum to get the job done, in the form of extra time, brainpower or application.

For most employees, leadership in the workplace is the key to capturing their interest and involvement. In particular, the nature of the relationship an employee has with their direct frontline manager, and the nature of their day to day communication, is critical for both engagement and managing retention.

Many frontline managers are promoted because they were good performers in their work, not because they possessed effective leadership skills. Often little is done to address the leadership skills shortfall, so it isn’t surprising that the majority of frontline managers are identified as ineffective in the people leadership aspects of their role. Employees are looking to their managers for inspiration and motivation. Generally frontline managers are not delivering and not meeting expectations if the results of Towers Perrin research are anything to go by.

The trend of recent years has been to focus on senior management leadership. However, the senior management team’s overall impact is actually less than that of frontline leaders organisational performance.

Addressing the frontline leadership shortfall can have dramatic results. It is the ‘ambivalent’ group of employees, who make up about 60 per cent of the workforce, who offer your organisation the biggest potential source of performance gains. The opportunity is in moving this middle group into the ‘engaged’ category. Then, the possible impact on your key performance indicators is unlocked.

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