Why Ask Questions to Kick Butt?

By James Brava | January 26, 2010

Why Ask Questions to Kick ButtWhy would you ask questions to kick butt?

Good question. I’m glad you asked.

The results your people deliver for you don’t just happen. Your people have to do something in order for them to be achieved. Sometimes they do the right thing; sometimes they do the wrong thing. And sometimes they just don’t do anything.

Your job as a frontline manager is to manage the behaviour of your team members to ensure they are doing the right things to achieve the results you need. When they’ve done the wrong thing or nothing at all, our inclination can be to tell them. Tell them what they’ve done wrong. Tell them what they haven’t done. And tell them what they need to do differently. However, often there is a better way.

To understand why asking questions will often be a more productive approach, let’s put you in the hot seat. Let’s imagine that your manager confronts you about a piece of work that you’ve just completed which has been done poorly. If your manager simply tells you what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed, what’s your level of motivation to make the improvements? I’m guessing that it’s relatively low. It is likely that you’ll just do what you need to do without any significant sense of commitment.

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Why Leadership Training Fails

By James Brava | January 19, 2010

Photo by Lars SundstromLeadership training fails. Actually, you already know this.

Let me explain…

You’ve been to any number of training courses before. For some of them your evaluation may have been, “Great lunch and good content.” Yet, four or five months later how much of what you learnt were you really applying? Some, but in all probability not a lot I suspect you’ll agree.

A well-quoted study by Neil Rackham provides the data to back up your experiences. Rackham, the founder of US sales consulting, training and research company Huthwaite, carried out an evaluation of sales training in the Xerox Corporation. By establishing the degree of carry-over from the classroom to the job, he hoped to gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of the company’s training.

The results stunned everyone. The study showed, on average, participants lost 87% of their new skills within one month.

Close investigation showed an interesting exception in the Xerox data. Some sales people showed a smaller loss and some showed a skill gain. When Rackham investigated these exceptions, he found those who lost least, or continued to gain skills, had managers who systematically managed the application of the new behaviours by their sales people immediately after the training.

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The 3 Frontline Leadership gaps

By James Brava | January 12, 2010

mind_the_gapI’ve just been reviewing a case study on the outcomes of Frontline Leadership consulting, training and support work we’ve been undertaking with one of our clients. There were key frontline leadership problems described which echo what I’ve been hearing from many clients and prospective clients.

Similar problems have been highlighted in a recent report from the Center for Creative Leadership. They regard the gap between current leadership bench strength and future leadership demands as a serious liability for organisations.

Our client worked with us because the frontline managers in her business unit were supervising rather than leading. This meant that frontline managers spent the majority of their time behind their desks. Coaching was identified as a ‘result session’ focused on the ‘what did work/what didn’t work’ methodology, rather than any effective behavioural coaching to maximise team performance.

Contributing to these problems was an issue that appears across many industries. Frontline managers had been promoted because they were technically good at their job, not because they had leadership potential. And there was little, if any, training given to help them to be a leader.

The core problem is that there is a lack of leadership capability in frontline managers that limits organisational productivity.

Interestingly, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) have concluded something similar in The Leadership Gap, a 2009 report on a study conducted over two years across 2,200 managers and three countries.

The leaders surveyed by CCL were asked to rate the importance of 20 research-derived leadership competencies, and the difference between what managers are actually demonstrating versus what they need to demonstrate to be maximally effective in the future.

The study found that the five most important future skills – leading people, strategic planning, inspiring commitment, managing change and developing employees – are amongst the weakest competencies for today’s leaders.

I’d argue that for frontline managers strategic planning, and to a lesser extent managing change, are lower importance competencies because they are less often called upon at that level of management. This means we can reasonably conclude that the three key competency gaps for frontline leaders are:

  1. leading people
  2. inspiring commitment
  3. developing employees

This aligns with our experience with a range of clients across the Asia-Pacific region. Yet organisations need to seriously address these three key competency gaps evident in their frontline leaders if they want to:

  • increase productivity
  • ensure a greater retention of key talent
  • improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
  • and maximise employee engagement
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Live long and prosper

By James Brava | January 5, 2010

live_long_and_prosperAfter the Christmas stuffing, I put my feet up over New Year and watched Star Trek.

I’ve always liked the half-Vulcan character, Mr Spock. Maybe it’s the nifty thing he does with his fingers – the Vulcan salute.

But mostly, I just love that phrase.

“Live long and prosper.”

May you.

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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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