What would make people not want to stand up and take responsibility for their actions?

• Afraid of the perception that they don’t know what they are doing. I don’t know about you, but this one really makes them look incompetent.
• Afraid of the consequences. Fear does wonderful things, usually not in a good way.
• Never had to take responsibility ever, so why start now. This one, is starting to really come out loud and clear to me. As the workforce is changing – this lack of responsibility is a fundamental building block on solid work ethic.

How do we change this behavior? For me, there is one key to turning it around. It all starts with one person, yourself. Demonstrate exactly what behavior you are looking for. Take personal responsibility to your actions. When you make a mistake, stand up and be counted. Demonstrated by say, “I made a mistake, I will do XXXX better next time.” This will let the folks in the team know that you are human and willing to admit that you messed up and how you plan on fixing that mistake in the future. Next up, I would make insure that the work environment is set up for folks to admit to mistakes without fear or perception issues popping up. When people feel that they are open to say what they need to say, they usually will do so. Lastly, when someone opens up and admits it, go ahead and thank them for their honesty. Seems like a strange thing to do, thanking someone for admitting a mistake, but when the team sees this behavior, they will understand that the environment is a safe place. This does not mean that the slate is wiped clean of the actions. Work has to get done and quickly, but what happens is everyone can get on with producing results, rather than wasting time “getting to the bottom of what happened.” I have never seen a person get fired for standing up when they have made a mistake and take ownership to insure that it does not happen again. Have you?

• The never ending project or sponsoring something that is too early on to move forward. To clarify these, they are the ones that the leader may see, may hear about or just have a question as simple as “why have we not looked at X?”. These projects take on a life of the own. Everyone wants to do a awesome job and provide the level of detail to what they are being asked. I think, we take that a bit too far. Why? I know I have made the assumption that this could not be real, so give it about as much time as necessary. Only to find out that my assumption was wrong. So, the next time – I am off on the complete analysis. Only to come back with the same answers as the quick way. Either way, the work is not really used for much or considered by many a waste of time.
• Every team has a “star” player, overload that person. Every manager that I have had (and me included) have one or more (hopefully more) stars on the team. They are the go to person that gets stuff done. They seem to have endless capacity or just make it look easy. Fact is, those folks don’t know their limits and just keep on, keeping on. Until the work is not getting done or complaints about the person start showing up.
• Not managing performance, quickly and effectively. I have had teams that have been pretty high performing teams, but not everyone performed the same. When performance is slipping, there is something wrong. Addressing it quickly and effectively, will help everyone.
• Labels. It is so easy to put labels on people and projects. Once you do that, the label will stick forever. Projects that start off wrong and struggle – get the label of failing. What happens when the team gets their act together doing the middle. Most leaders have already given up on that project or project team. Performance is usually documented once a year, labels come with that. Could take you a year to shed the label! Referencing my performance management  posts – just in case you want more detail.

Being leaders is not easy, during the day to day activities; there are times when error’s in judgment happen. It is the good leader that is able to quickly see that they have made a slight error and correct it. Work has to get done and the people in the organization need to feel enriched for the experience as well. Wasting time, helps no one. Look at the long term stuff, rather than the short term. Remember to keep your goals in front of you.

Researchers have found that most people use influencing styles that are a combination of logical, emotional and cooperative appeals. Nice what of wrapping words around my manager friend and my answers to the question – describe how you influence others?

Influencing Styles:

• Logical influencing is about appealing to the person’s reason and intellect. Clearly and logically explaining what one is trying to achieve and the why. Providing examples of how one’s goal is realistic and achievable. Going back to setting the proper expectations in a very logical manner.
• Emotional influencing is about linking the message to an emotional motivator. Demonstrate the trust that you have in the person’s capabilities.  Everyone wants to be successful, so tie you message around the success that will come from doing the work (visibility in the organization, learning new skills and the all important advancement).
• Cooperative influencing is about building a connection between the two parties. Working together to set expectations, making decisions or just getting the necessary results. In the end, the relationship becomes stronger and easier with cooperative influencing.

To drive home this with an example – I want to use my adult children. When raising kids – you get to practice almost everyone of these everyday. I remember trying to use logic at times, just to see the deer in the headlights look or the disgust look of your wasting my time. But, you march through – because they will grow up and need to be able to do the right things. Emotional seemed to really work! Never really got much pushback on any reward system. Cooperative on the other hand, difficult to practice on the wee little ones. When you can include them, it definitely makes for some solid shaping of the young adults that they could become. I think this example also translates to influencing at work as well. I think I learned the honed the skills in the workplace - than applied them when my children were born. For me, I don’t think I can ever stop learning how to do this better, the situation and the people are changing every time.

Over the my many years, I have been very fortunate to try different management techniques, fads or whatever is hot now.  Many of them, were employer recommended or part of my mandatory training. From just about everyone of them – I have taken some nuggets that help shape my management style. Over a year ago, I took strengthen management/leadership course. We used the Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath to frame the class.

The on-line survey took us about 15 minutes to complete and provided at the end – your top 5 strengths. Am I surprised by the strengths that the survey told me – not really. I know have better labels for those strengths. The question I have is does a manager truly understand his/her teams strengths? Does that person know their own strengths? I don’t mean the skills that they are good at – but their true strengths. So, as soon as the book comes in; I am going to have my team complete the survey, read part 1 (what is survey and why) and then read their top 5 strengths. Once done, we will have a team meeting to share our strengths and how we can apply them.

For those that are wondering – what are Steve’s strengths.. Well, I’m not shy – here you go.

1. Arranger – I am a conductor. When faced with a complex situation involving many factors, you enjoy managing all the variables, aligning and realigning them until you are sure you have arranged them in the most productive configuration possible.
2. Relator – describes my attitude toward your relationships. Making deeper connects.
3. Responsibility – forces me  to take a psychological ownership for anything I commit to, and whether large or small, I feel emotionally bound to follow it though to completion.
4. Strategic – enables me to sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is not a skill that can be taught. It is a distinct way of thinking, a special perspective on the world at large.
5. Self-assurance is similar to self-confidence. In the deepest part of me, I faith in my strengths. I know that I am able – able to take risks, able to meet new challenges, able to stake claims, and, most important, able to deliver.

I decided that I was going to take this to my 10 person team -  we need to take an inventory of our strengths. The results for the complete team were solid (the team covered over 80% of the strengths in the book).For most folks, they did not feel too surprised by their individual results. They really should not, strengths are strengths. What they really enjoyed was learning what the other members of the team’s strengths were and how they could work better with their teammates.

We were in the middle of our performance management, I decided to focus more on taking the time to work with each team member to focus on their strengths. What would make them a valued member of the work team, the organization and the company. Really drive to their strengths. I used to focus on the areas of improvements and how they could be better. For the most part, this was met with little to moderate success.

Can you get away with only focusing on their strengths? Simple answer, No. There are those weaknesses that folks have that are necessary for their jobs in order to be successful. I call that the price of admission. You have to punch that ticket either way.

Is this working? So far it has been about three months, some of the team has really embraced this and are taking off. I have a few that would rather I tell them exactly what and how to do it, but that is okay. Price of admission… I am looking forward to the end of this year to see exactly how this is going to play out.

Thoughts?

My last post was about how to deal with the difficult or overly demanding manager – when is enough, enough. Sticky situation all the way around.  The more common situation is how do you manage difficult people.

As a manager for quite sometime, I have come across a few of those folks. Some that worked directly for me, some that I had to interface with quite frequently and some that I just happen to work with briefly.  I would like to share about five of my techniques with those situations.

• Document everything!  I know, we all don’t like to document everything, but when you do – you will be better off because of it. As a new manager, I used to skip over the document part. I thought, well, we talked about this and that should be good enough. In a perfect world, probably, but this is not a perfect world. Memories get faded over time or even lost. Documenting everything is your record of exactly what was communicated, received and expected. When it comes to the court, if it isn’t written down, then it never happened. Take the time to document – it is your best friend in the long run. I have been doing this for quite some time and documentation has been my savior more than not.
• Objective counts. When communicating your expectations and areas for where the employee needs to improve – you most certainly want to have the results be tangible. This way the employee can track their own performance as well.  Subjective accountability is left too open for interruption and could be misleading later on.  One word of caution, stay away from the ‘attitude’ references. Nothing smells more like subjective than describing someone’s attitude. Always focus on tangible objectives!
• Be a role model. Be aware of how you are acting and reacting. You should be an example of what you would like the difficult person to be like. Look the person in the eye when talking to them! Not too much to seem intimidating, just enough to show how important this is. A normal everyday discussion – as if nothing was wrong. Treat the person as you would like to be treated. Who really is the better person in this situation? Act it.
•  Ask questions like – “Everything okay or Is there anything I should know about?” Let them know that there has been a drop in performance, change in their overall performance or simply they are not themselves.  Opening up these discussions could lead you to something different than what is already in your head.
• Follow-up in one on one’s. You have documented everything, you have focused on the objective results and you are helping with role modeling – you need to make sure that this is not a one time activity. Sit down and discuss how things are going, discuss the results to date, ask the person how they think they are doing. Don’t forget to document this too. The end goal is to have solid results and an employee that is producing and working within the team well.

Managing people probably more common sense than anything. When I first became a supervisor – it was because I was viewed a superstar at the tasks that I given to lead. That did not make me a good supervisor. I have had years of experience to help me develop a style and way of how I do things. Some mentors along the way to follow and some difficult managers that I used those examples as what not to do. I continue to learn and hopefully grow.

Do you have any tips or items you want to share?