Thinking in pictures, seeing circumstances as a series of cause and effects, and using theoretical models or mental models as guides for making decisions comes natural to about 50% of the population.  To 50% of the population seeing things in this perspective is a bit more of a challenge.  It isn’t a matter of intelligence or education.  It is a matter of natural preference for how we see the world. However, for all of us learning to see and use mental models as decision-making aids can be very beneficial. 

Simple 2 X 2 matrices are easy to remember, can represent a wide variety of situations in a simple format, and can help you sort out complex situations and reduce them to a manageable few set of circumstances upon which to base your decision. The model below is a great tool for sorting out the impact any employee has on the performance and culture of an organization.  However, it is particularly useful in sorting out the importance of a manager’s or supervisor’s performance versus their impact on the culture of the organization.  If you believe as I do that the more a manager or leader understands the importance and visibility their role plays in shaping both the organizational culture and the results they are able to achieve, the more valuable this model becomes as a tool for decision making.   Here is the model…

                                                                                                Culture

So how do you read the matrix and how do you use it to make effective decisions?

Time Bombs – you all know who these employees are.  They are the ones infecting everyone else with negative attitudes, rumor and innuendo, etc.  They may be good performers despite their negative attitude, but you can’t afford to have them infect others and undermine the performance-based culture you are trying to foster. They are carriers of infectious diseases.  Get your documentation in order and terminate them before they infect other good performers.

Losers - This group of employees don’t ‘get it’. They don’t understand the culture you are trying to create nor are they performing.   They are the one’s you’ve tried to train, you have tried to motivate and they just don’t respond.  The difference between the Losers and the Time Bombs is the Losers aren’t infecting others so they are less dangerous.  Identify them, try to rehabilitate them, and if unsuccessful, terminate them.

Positive Potentials – This group is probably the majority of your employees.  They are solid contributors and they behave according to the organizational values.   Nothing really wrong only you know they have more potential and could become real Superstars.  Corrective action and coaching can get them to step up to the challenge and become real leaders.    

Superstars – Their name describes their behavior and value. They understand what is expected and why it is important, they are leaders, they are high producers, and they positively influence the behavior of others.  These are the real keepers.  They are early adopters and the leaders who help move your organization forward toward your goals. 

Very frequently I run into situations where managers know an employee is in the Time Bomb or Loser category, but they haven’t 1) documented the employee’s performance or 2) talked with the employee.  When I ask them why, they often say, because it is so hard to hire employees that I can’t afford to lose them.  My position is that it is better to have fewer employees who are either Positive Potentials or Superstars than to deal with the ‘carrying costs’ of managing the poor performers.  You all know how much time you spend trying to manage the behavior and performance of these few when your effort would be so much more enjoyable, rewarding and productive if it were spent helping and developing the majority who really produce and help you achieve your goals.  It’s the 80/20 rule, but we get caught up in spending 80% of our time on the wrong group of employees.

http://www.peakperformancecorp.com

http://joycefriel.blogspot.com

As if the general news wasn’t enough to get you down, spring is often when the performance review process rears its ugly head in many corporations.  As a manager for six divisions at Eastman Kodak Company over the course of my 27-year career there, I can relate to this concern, but I also know it doesn’t have to be this way.  Why is it that so many people dread both writing and reviewing performance reviews? As a leader, you have it in your power to make this annual conversation one of recognition and encouragement or at least positive coaching and empowerment. 

Here are a Few Reasons Why Performance Reviews are Dreaded by Everyone Involved 

• Poor Training and Development – Promotions often occur because of great individual contribution followed by little training and development on how to be a good manager and supervisor. If you are in this situation, ask your HR department or the leader you report to for training and coaching in this area.
• Yes, But – Often you are told how you’ve performed through the year and then the conversation quickly segues to a yes, but of what you need to do to improve.  All the positive energy and good feeling you just created was just lost.  Guess what the employee will remember?  Avoid this problem, but separating performance review and performance planning into two different conversations.
• Poor Documentation Processes – It is really difficult to remember accurately the specifics and details of a person’s performance without good documentation throughout the year.  Avoid this problem by keeping an active folder for each employee.  This is simply a memory-jogger file for collecting specific performance notations that need to be included in the annual review.  Once the official review documents have been completed, purge this file and start a new active file for the coming year.  This is not an official performance file, but a place to keep your own notes so you more accurately provide details to the employee.
• Generalities - Not providing specific examples is a real downer for employees. Being told you did a good job or receiving coaching without specifics provides nothing to grow on.  Make sure you keep detailed notes in your active file mentioned above.
• No Surprises - All too often what an employee hears during the performance review is a surprise.  Nothing the employee hears during this discussion should be a surprise.  Any time something occurs throughout the year that deserves coaching and correction or praise and encouragement should be mentioned and reviewed at the time it occurs.

• Lack of clarity of expectations – Very frequently organizations have done a very poor job of establishing performance expectations.  When employees don’t have clarity about expectations for their job, it is almost impossible to contribute what the organization and supervisors are expecting, yet they will be receiving a performance review documenting what they did or did not do well.  No wonder they look upon performance reviews with trepidation. Avoid this morale buster and ensure everyone can contribute effectively by ensuring every position has well documented, shared, and thoroughly discussed performance expectations.
• Subjectivity – In the absence of objective standards and expectations, supervisors have no option but to write performance reviews subjectively.  By human nature, some subjectivity usually creeps into reviews, but favoritism and subjectivity can be minimized by writing performance reviews against well-established, openly-shared expectations for each position.

History is hard to overcome and many, many employees and supervisors have negative experiences relating to performance reviews.  As a leader, you have an obligation to simply not repeat history.  Examine what is the state of performance reviews in your organization and commit to making more positive memories for yourself and your employees.

Don’t Miss Out!

Strategic Planning for Entrepreneur’s, April 16 and 17, give me a call at 480 391 3861 for details.

 Keep up to date frequently by following my blog at http://joycefriel.blogspot.com

Turn off the news!
With all the doom and gloom in the news today, it would be easy to believe there is nothing positive coming out of our current global economic situation. I am not belittling those many very unfortunate situations in which people have been very adversely affected. However, I, for one, and many of my friends and clients believe now is the time to look for and create positive opportunities.

It is easy to get caught up in what you hear on CNN and the news stations. Turn it off! And get turned on to all the good things that are going on around you. Opportunity abounds, but only if you are looking for it and decide to take advantage of it.

Refocus in order to grow!
From whom and from where will the next breakthrough come? From you? From your company? Stranger things have happened. Rather than focusing on down sizing, cutting costs and laying off people, focus on what it would take to increase sales or launch that new opportunities which could grow your business rather than shrink it. Raising capital and increasing capacity rather than struggling to cut costs and reduce investments in your company and your people is not only exciting, it is a positive growth strategy rather than a declining negative approach.

Best of luck. Let me know the stories from your own experiences.

TIPSÓ – Touch Points, Ideas, Possibilities and Solutions

Please feel free to share these TIPS with your colleagues and friends.  If you wish to include any of this material in any of your own work or publications, please contact us for permission. Thank you.

The Best Don’t Need to Manage

We all are continually seeking to be the best at leading, managing, owning, development, etc.  Just note the huge sale of books such as Good to Great, Developing the Leader Within, The Leadership Challenge, Built to Last, and on and on and on.  While these books very effectively point out examples to follow and practices to emulate, there is just nothing quite as powerful as experiencing greatness first hand.  The case in point below demonstrates how ‘the best don’t manage’.

Over the years I have worked with hundreds of CEOs, Presidents, and owners some of whom were very effective and all genuinely and sincerely were trying their best.  Once in a while you come across someone who possesses a personal belief about the goodness in people and has a personal style that allows their belief to permeate through all they do. As a result those around them accept challenges beyond their expected horizon and truly blossom into a heightened level of their own potential.

I have a client who fits this description.

I’d like to share with you some of the traits that allow this person to maximize the best in others by very subtly ‘managing’ not only their own behaviors but all the activities of their company. Seldom do they have to overtly ‘manage’ people or processes, they surround themselves with people who have potential and then allow that potential to grow.  Here are some examples of what they do and how they do it. They realize

• The critical importance of hiring the right people – better to do without than hire the wrong person.
• That even it is difficult to do, sometimes you have to ‘de-hire’ a person who just doesn’t fit and never will.
• If an employee can’t be inspired, they made a mistake in hiring them and both the employee and the organization at-large will be better served the sooner this employee is gone.
• Employees really do know what they are doing, the key is to get out of their way and let them do it.
• Accountability and consequences (both positive and negative) must be used hand-in-hand for empowerment and human potential to grow.
• You must first trust before you get trust in return so they willingly give the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.

While this client spends a lot of time thinking about and subtly positioning his own behavior and that of others in order to get the results that are needed, he does very little overt ‘managing’ of people and processes because the employees have willingly stepped up to the challenge.  His role is to set the direction, chart the course, keep the organization on task at a high level, ensure accountability is in place and provide liberal positive consequences for work well done.  As a result he seldom has to step into the more typical ‘manager’ role that is so typically stereotyped. He spends a lot of time listening, asking questions, helping, thinking and smiling.

I recently facilitated a senior leadership team work session for this organization.  And, while I didn’t actually keep track of the amount of time this person talked versus the air time of others in the session, I feel confident in saying he spoke less than 30% of the time.  He set the tone, stated the objectives, asked questions, gave affirming answers and confirmed decisions others were making.  This CEO is a delight to work with and I can only image how empowering, energizing, and engaging it is to work with him. 

 http://www.peakperformance.com

http://www.joycefriel.blogspot.com

by: Joyce Friel, Peak Performance Consulting

In my career as a leadership strategist and organizational consultant, I have often been asked to conduct organizational assessments.  I get this request for a variety of reasons, but often it is to discover what the obstacles are within an organization that may be preventing it from achieving its goals or breaking through to the next level.  What I find is always instructive for the organizational leadership and generally serves as the foundation for future change initiatives. 

The toughest situations are those times when the primary obstacle is the leader himself/herself.  When this is the case, there is very little win/win in the organization currently.  Organizational performance is sub-optimized, employees are usually frustrated, the leader is not as effective as they could be and the messenger runs the risk of being shot.  In these cases, everyone says they want improvement, but very frequently the leader is not made aware of the dynamics and impact of his/her actions.  So what do you do to make this a win/win situation? Here are some positive steps to consider:

As an employee you can…

• Be the example you want others to be
• Provide honest input when asked through an employee survey or a 360 assessment process
• Realize you can only control you own behaviors – you do not own the actions of others

As a management peer/friend you can…

• Help the leader see how much the organization cares about and depends on their continued ability to be a strong leader
• Encourage the use of a 360 assessment process if it is not currently used so the leader gets honest, anonymous input from multiple perspectives
• Ask the leader to mentor you so that as a protégé you have the opportunity to show them a mirror image of what you wish they were and are in a position to discuss a wide variety of situations with them privately

As a consultant you can …

• Help the leadership team see the value of using 360 assessment processes including providing coaching for the participants
• Have the courage to be honest with the leader in a tactful, kind, caring manner
• Use a variety of instruments and/or processes to help not only the leader, but also the leadership team deal with the challenges of effective leadership
• Develop a coaching rather than a consulting relationship with the leader and/or the whole leadership team

As the leader being confronted you can…

• Recognize you have both a personal and an enterprise responsibility to be a strong leader; and now that you are aware of the responsibility you are accountable to lead change
• Realize your management peer/friends, many of your employees and your consultant are allies in your effort
• Initiate a leadership development and growth process for the entire leadership team
• Demonstrate the courage it takes to confront change both personally and as the primary change leader for the enterprise

http://www.peakperformancecorp.com

http://www.joycefriel.blogspot.com

by: Joyce Friel, Peak Performance Consulting

You know ‘stuckness’. It’s when you’re at that point where you feel immobilized, confused, uncertain, stymied, numb, powerless, not in control, tired. It happens when you lose your job, lose a big contract, didn’t get the promotion you expected, find out you have to move, get a divorce, are very ill, or some one you care about is very ill. You know, you’ve been there.Know what? It also happens when you get married (Oh, this is what its like!), have a child (My gosh, will this kid ever sleep through the night?), get a promotion or a big new responsibility (Oh dear, can I do this?), or your child graduates (Yippee, but will they move back in?). Getting ‘stuck’ happens both when sad and happy occasions occur.

Stuckness can be good if you hit on a process or method that really works for you and you work it for maximum return. But it isn’t cool when you get to end of that good run and haven’t thought through your options. It can mean you don’t know how to change, stop learning, are helpless to help yourself because you keep doing things the same way you’ve always done them. But luckily we all have the choice to change from stuck to luck (catch the rhyme) with minimal risk of things getting worse and maximum potential for them to get better.

Good News and Bad News
You don’t think you’ve ever been there? Just wait!
Haven’t been there in a while? Good!
You’re there now? Welcome to the club – it happens to all of us!
Guess what? It will happen to you again (and again, and again).
Yep, that’s right. It happens to all of us…multiple times. Some of you move through the physical, emotional, and psychological roller coaster of change quickly and for others it takes time. The key is to not get STUCK in the quagmire.

Warning Signs!
Fortunately, there are warning signs and if you heed them you’ll become more resilient and get out of ‘stuckness’ more quickly. Some of these signs are:

• A body part – you know which part it is. It will get sore, start to ache, act up.
• Breathing – holding your breathe or breathing too quickly – slow down, take deep breaths
• Pace – faster than usual. You’re rushing to get to some place, but you don’t even know where.
• Sleeping pattern – either insomnia or wanting to sleep all the time, yet you are still tired.

When you see any of these warning signs, they are clear signals that you need to take stock, reflect, review your plan for getting life back in order, and if necessary, get help.

So what can I do to move on…get myself out of ‘stuckness’ when it happens to me?

Here are a few TIPS…

• NORMAL and NECESSARY – stages of change happen to everyone – accept it as a fact
• STEAM VALVES – find an outlet for frustration, anger, confusion
• SUPPORT SYSTEM – accept the help and understanding of your friends and family
• YOU – take care of yourself – maintain exercise, eat right, get rest
• PLAN – reexamine, reflect and plan for how you can take steps to move forward

http://www.peakperformancecorp.com
http://joycefriel.blogspot.com

by: Joyce Friel, Peak Performance Consulting

All too often in the news we hear only the events which cause our opinion of top business leaders to be diminished.  Granted, leading any size corporation isn’t easy and the lives of those at the top of the largest organizations are extremely public.  In many ways this only serves to heighten the responsibility these leaders have to not only themselves and their corporations, but to the public at-large.

 I recently read a book full of wisdom which I highly recommend.  It is about life and leadership lessons and my copy is now messy with underlines, notes in the margins and dog-eared pages.  Tough Choices by Carly Fiorina is a memoir of her life including her very public departure from HP.  Whether you personally approve of her actions or not, there is much to be learned from her experiences.  While I strongly advise you read the entire book, below I am sharing with you some of what I believe are the highlights.  Enjoy!

LEADERSHIP

• Character is made up of candor (speaking the truth and speaking up and out), integrity (preserving your principles and acting on them), and authenticity (knowing what you believe, being who you are and standing up for both).
• Life is about the journey, not the destination. The steps along the way are what make us who we are.
• People like to be asked about themselves. This is a great management tool. You get smart fast by listening.
• A boss’s confidence in an employee is a powerful motivator. When they see potential in you, you begin to look for it in yourself. Believing in someone else, so they can believe in themselves, is a small but hugely significant act of leadership.
• Each time I overcame my own fear, I was stronger. A leader’s job is to help people overcome their fear.
• Live your life in a way that makes you happy and proud. If you sell your soul, no one can pay you back.
• Strategy should be ennobling. An organization’s effort must be sustained through worthy purpose.
• Change can only begin if its force is greater than the weight of history and the power of the status quo.

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CHOICES

• If we cannot choose our circumstances, we can always choose our response to them. If we cannot choose who we are, we can always choose to become something more. We cannot always choose the hurdles we must overcome, but we can choose how we overcome them. To stop choosing is to start dying.
• We can only be diminished if we choose to allow it.
• Value isn’t measured by title or position, but by what someone is made of and how they choose to use it.

OFFICE POLITICS

• Office politics is based on power – who has it, who lost it, who wants it. You have to learn to play the game and see it as a game to be successful.
• Like it or not, seniority and familiarity could and do sometimes trump results. Looking and acting the part sometimes wins.
• Gender alone sometimes denies the presumption of competence. I had to work harder and be better prepared than anyone else to gain credibility. To do so I had to convince people I knew what I was talking about in the first few minutes. Only then would they listen to what I had to say.

PLAYING TO WIN

• If you can’t play to win, you may as well not play.
• We did change goals because they turned out to be tougher than we anticipated. We did not think about how we might lose. We thought about how we could win. We won because we chose to.
• All triumphs are made of the same stuff: the right support, the right team, the determination to achieve the goal, lots of really hard work. Triumphs are much more about choices than about chance.
• People will always behave relationally based upon their own self-interest. They behave irrationally simply because they believe someone else is going to.
• If only one part or parameter of a complex problem is understood or acted upon, the problem cannot be solved. Only by comprehending the whole system – its interactions, dependencies, constraints and pressures – can a real, sustainable improvement be made.

 http://www.peakperformancecorp.com

http://joycefriel.blogspot.com