Patti Cotton

Executive Coach & Career Strategist

vision

Three Ways to Help Your New Employee Execute Well

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Three Ways to Help Your New Employee Execute Well
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Do you sometimes wonder if one of your managers made a mistake with their latest hire?

How can you tell?

The new hire’s transferable skills check out. Their attitude is positive. Team morale is high. And you can clearly tell the new hire is highly engaged and ready to go.

But he or she is not getting the work done.

Why is this?

There’s a handy, quick mental process I like to go through with leaders when they are second-guessing a latest hire.

Is it really the new hire, or is it your management?

Here is how you can tell.

1. Does the new employee show a clear understanding of their role, responsibilities, and your expectations?

Be careful not to downplay this. I have worked with many great companies whose new hires may receive a job description and a desk as their orientation. The manager counts on the team to fill in the blanks for the new person. If your company takes this casual stance, you are losing money and a potentially great employee.

What does the new hire’s manager truly expect of them and their area of responsibility? What are the goals set for them? Timelines? Metrics?

2. Does the new hire have the right tools and resources to do the job?

Again, most leaders will respond with an immediate “yes.” But they are basing this on what they think the employee needs to do the job. Has he or she been asked the question, “What do you need in order to achieve your goals here? Do you have the tools and resources you need?” Just test this. You may be surprised.

3. Has the immediate supervisor developed an accountability system with their new employee?

Can the employee access their immediate supervisor on a regular basis for help and questions? Does he or she get the regular feedback needed so they know they are on track? The opposite is more prevalent than you would hope.

In fact, according to one study by Dresser & Associates, HR, Payroll, and Management Solutions, only 7% of managers and 10% of senior executives in the workforce are held accountable consistently for developing their direct reports through performance management processes.

How do you compare?

Five Daily Habits for Good Management

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Five Daily Habits for Good Management
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Is your company or team making steady and continuous improvements? Or do you feel like you are throwing darts that keep missing the target?

When you’ve spent serious money on strategies and plans to raise team or company performance and these initiatives don’t stick, it’s time to look in the mirror.

You aren’t alone.

The reported failure of large-scale change programs is approximately 70% (McKinsey and Company). It can be that you or an advisor have selected a program that does not address well the needs of the plant, function, or business. But more often than not, the failure lies with the people – not the program.

If your enterprise isn’t making daily strides, check your personal daily management habits. Because more often than not, this is what is holding things back.

Where are you when you review the following 5 points?

The 5-Point List of Daily Good Management Habits

1. Are you teaching people how to solve problems?

If you are telling others what to do, rather than teaching them how to think so that they can perform on their own, then you are wasting everyone’s time, energy, and money. Do you find yourself consistently providing answers for others, rather than helping them to work out the critical thinking necessary to develop excellent decision-making and autonomy? Shift your mindset and your behavior to empower your team to grow and perform at higher levels for you.

2. Are you creating a physically and emotionally safe environment for people to dialogue with one another?

Let’s face it – it’s probably not your product that is the slowdown problem. It’s the way your people work together. Rate healthy communication and conflict management in your enterprise on a scale of 1-5. Let’s say that 1 indicates silos, a reticence to work things out, chronic unresolved conflict resulting in poor performance. And 5 indicates the high ability to work things out, solve problems together, and a great team and company spirit. Where are you? Less than a 5 means you have a problem area that will slow down your performance targets.

3. Are you celebrating mistakes as points of learning?

If your company culture punishes mistakes, you are stifling creative thinking and innovative results. Learn to differentiate between repetitive blunders that cost the enterprise time and money, and new mistakes made on the trail to your new or improved product or service. Celebrate the latter, recognizing that without striking out to try new things, you will always get the same results you have gotten.

4. Are you focusing on results?

Make sure your action plans, meetings, and regular follow-up reports on these are examining results, pinpointing areas of low performance, and course-correcting. Too often, the status quo within a company creates complacency and a lack of follow-through. Make sure that decisions are made on next steps, and an accountability mechanism is put in place so that momentum is not lost.

5. Are you giving regular feedback and coaching to others?

You’ve placed great confidence in your team, and in the spirit of empowerment, you have allowed them to get out there and make change. But how in touch with them are you as they do this? Don’t mistake abdication for empowerment. Regular coaching and feedback are necessary to nurture your people. Focus on the charge you have given them, supporting them with what they need in order to succeed. Remember to include what they feel is important to their personal and professional development. And don’t avoid the tough stuff. People, first. Results follow.

Are you doing all these things well, but still not getting the results you seek?

Your program’s action plan may be costing you big money. More on this next week.

Is Your Team Costing the Company Money?

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Is Your Team Costing the Company Money?
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Three Trust Indicators

You can talk all you want about time management tactics, learning how to facilitate critical conversations, and mastering conflict resolution.

But unless your team enjoys a high level of trust among its team members, none of these wonderful skills will help your team’s performance.

In fact, your team may be costing your company a lot of money.

Signs of an Unhealthy Trust Quotient

Here are some signs your team may have an unhealthy (and therefore costly) trust quotient.

  • Everything takes longer and seems harder for team members.
  • People don’t do their best work.
  • They easily become disengaged and withdrawn.
  • Their confidence in themselves and others on the team diminishes.
  • They have feelings of complacency or even fatigue.
  • They are not as prone to connecting with each other or sharing information.
  • Grousing about the company may be a common theme.
  • Some might even question if the enterprise is a right fit for them.

What It Is Not

These signs are not to be confused with team overload, where a company over-commits, and its results are felt throughout the organization with inappropriate workloads and deadlines. No, this is not overload.

What It Is

This is a falling away from former collaboration. It’s an unwillingness to participate by speaking up. It’s a reticence to take risks together, and an uncomfortable commitment to the status quo. You may see things like escalated emotions, turf issues, abdication of responsibility or micromanaging, and certainly some hidden agendas.

As you consider what comes with low trust, you can easily deduce what this means to the company.

What do you do when you detect signs that your team needs to build more trust?

You need to determine the source of this lack of trust so that you can rectify it.

According to researchers Dennis Reina, PhD; Michelle Reina, PhD, and David Hudnut, MIA, renewing trust can result in greater accountability, effectiveness, innovation, respect, performance, profitability (need I go on?). The researchers have developed a Team Trust Scale that measures three areas: trust of character, trust of capability, and trust of communication.

How does your team rate?

I have taken the researchers’ indices of a high level of trust in these areas and paraphrased statements with which you and your team members can rate yourselves.

Using a scale of 1-5, with 5 being highest. How do you rate?

Trust of Character

  • I manage expectations
  • I establish boundaries
  • I delegate appropriately
  • I encourage mutually-serving intentions
  • I keep agreements
  • I am consistent

Trust of Capability

  • I acknowledge people’s abilities and skills
  • I allow people to make decisions
  • I involve others and seek their input
  • I help people learn skills

Trust of Communication:

  • I share information
  • I tell the truth
  • I admit mistakes
  • I give and receive constructive feedback
  • I maintain confidentiality
  • I speak with good purpose

How did you do? And where do you need to shore up first, in order to make biggest impact in up-leveling team trust?

Four Types of Leadership Behaviors You Can’t Do Without

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Four Types of Leadership Behaviors You Can’t Do Without
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How many leadership behaviors have you read about? Ten? Twenty? Another number?

Pretty mind-boggling, isn’t it? And if you are like many, such a sea of varying information can cause you to simply put the latest article aside and go back to doing things the way you know how.

In the world of leadership development, schools of thought are just as varied, and this means that I, as executive coach, can choose to use an assessment that evaluates 10 areas, or 26 areas.

So, now what?

If you are seeking to fast-track your leadership in this new year, I advise that you focus on enhancing just a small subset of four leadership behaviors.

Just four areas.

New research reveals that these four types of leadership behaviors account for 89% of leadership effectiveness, especially for front-line leaders. (Source: McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index https://www.mckinsey.com/)

McKinsey & Company surveyed 81 organizations, diverse in industry and geography (agriculture, consulting, energy, government, insurance, mining, and real estate in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Europe).

The results showed the following four areas of leadership to be most important, explaining 89% of the variance between strong and weak organizations in terms of leadership effectiveness.

  1. Supporting others.
  2. Solving problems effectively.
  3. Operating to follow through for results.
  4. Seeking different perspectives.

What does this mean for you?

Well, what it doesn’t mean is that you just need these four and then you can sit back and relax. But what it does mean is that, as you review your leadership commission and where to start, it may well be with these four.

Rating yourself on a scale of 1-5, how do you feel you measure up?

I’ve included some reflective questions to help you begin your assessment:

Supporting others.

Do you operate with authenticity, and show a sincere interest in those around you? Do you seek to inspire and build trust? Are you adopting the approach “tough on issues, tender on people”?

Solving problems effectively.

Are you thoughtful as you analyze and consider best options for action? Do you seek to be proactive in identifying and anticipating challenges, and to come up with solutions, rather than to react too quickly without the information you need, risking a poor decision?

Operating to follow through for results.

Do you marry vision and supporting strategy to action? Have you mastered the behaviors required to meet your goals and objectives, and can you manage people, products, and process effectively so that outcomes are a reflection of your best work?

Seeking different perspectives.

As esoteric as it sounds, do you “seek first to understand, then to be understood?” (Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People). Do you ask your team members to contribute ideas for performance improvement? Are you keeping the pulse on changes in the environment that are likely to influence your company and your work?

Developing any one of these four is a game-changer, and I will tell you frankly that you probably won’t do this alone. Why? It is one thing to be self-aware about the changes one needs to make, and it’s quite another to be able to effectuate those shifts and make them part of who you truly are. You will need to tap into some kind of expert support to step into more of this potential.

This said, the first step to change is to identify the needed change. So, where will you start? What will give you the greatest ROI in your own leadership?

And secondly, who might help you get there?

Three-Direction Checklist for Leadership Effectiveness

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Three-Direction Checklist for Leadership Effectiveness
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Your role requires that you lead. You may be in charge of a team, a greater area of responsibility, or even an enterprise.

Yet, if you think your job is to simply lead those who report to you, think again.

You need to manage up, down, and sideways.

Why?

Because strong team leadership is not enough to support the enterprise effectively. Research continues to prove this as we examine what works – and what doesn’t – to align culture, increase business impact, and frankly, to ensure your career success.

Effective leadership means that you need to be able to develop trust, forge shared accountability, and strengthen your influence at every level in the organization.

How do you do this? By managing this up, down, and across.

Here’s a quick checklist – can you identify where you need to strengthen your leadership in managing?

Managing Up

Are you aligned with your leader’s agenda? As you work with your CEO, your board, or other leader, are you focusing on strategic issues and demonstrating financial results? Or does your own agenda distract from these key areas, wasting time, energy, money, and brainpower?

Many a seasoned leader has fallen into complacency with what works for their particular team. In doing so, their ability to see the larger picture diminishes. If you find yourself in the latter situation, you will want to acquire or revive your company-wide lens to connect your role and your team’s charge to the organizational agenda.

Managing Down

Have you aligned your reports’ work to the agenda of the company? Or have the growing demands placed on your area strayed from the larger agenda? When I first begin work with a company in growth mode, I frequently discover that teams may be working on things that have little to do with the current company agenda.

Shifting priorities at the top means close communication at all levels to share this so that all are supporting the enterprise in their focus, responsibilities, and assigned work. When was the last time you re-examined your reports’ roles, assigned projects, and accompanying goals and deadlines, to make sure these align with the company’s direction and focus?

Managing Across

Have you aligned with your colleagues, both intra- and inter-team, so that you support shared accountability and success? Or are you shooting virtual arrows at your colleagues and their teams because they are holding you back or interfering with your ability to deliver?

The lion’s share of productivity problems in an organization result from a lack of commitment and ability to solve problems between teams. Forging strong ties and agreeing to keep communication channels open for this are key to keeping employees engaged and motivated, and your customer’s journey an excellent one.

Where do you stand as you review these three areas? What is the one thing you can do now to move forward in this area so that you can capture greater success?