by Diana Southall | Sep 25, 2014 | culture, job fit
Want passionate engaged employees?
Then you need a passionate engaged manager with great leadership and coaching ability. One who focuses on productivity, accountability, and also cares about and builds trust with his or her team.
According to Gallup research, they say only 10% of people have the innate talent to do this, and that about another 20% can be effective if they are provided coaching and development to hone these elusive skills.
Gallup found 5 key behaviors that differentiated great managers from the poor ones (quoted verbatim):
- They motivate every single employee to take action and engage employees with a compelling mission and vision.
- They have the assertiveness to drive outcomes and the ability to overcome adversity and resistance.
- They create a culture of clear accountability.
- They build relationships that create trust, open dialogue, and full transparency you could check here.
- They make decisions based on productivity, not politics.
If the Fortune 500 can’t find good managers, how can your firm?
The good news is that people exist in your organization and in your neighborhood with these talents. The trick is to find them, develop them and give them a good team to work with.
If you have one or more managers, here are your action steps to find out if you have the right person in the right role:
- Evaluate your current team for job fit (those in manager roles and those you see a high potential for that role in the future)- using a combination of personality assessment, performance analysis, and co-worker feedback
- Coach and train you managers to build relationships (focus on the people) while emphasizing productivity and accountability (focus on the task)
- Move those that are not succeeding in the role to another position
If you do not develop great managers, you are guaranteed to disengage everyone and are likely lose your top performers. They will leave to find a better manager somewhere else.
Read full Harvard Business Review blog article
Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Sep 9, 2014 | job fit, performance
It’s a common story- Jane was great at her job– a quick learner eager to do more. So you gave her more– a whole lot more. But now she seems overwhelmed, unsure, and downright frazzled.
Will she start swimming and get her head back above water?
It depends—does she lack easily trainable skills or is the gap due to a mismatch of personality or competency?
The first step when you encounter the aftermath of a well-meaning major assignment or promotion is to chat with Jane. Where does she think she is struggling? Is there a specific area you can pinpoint where a bit of support or coaching would help?
Let’s say you promoted Jane to a team leader for her customer service group, and her tasks now include scheduling 10 reps across two shifts, weekly reports for the manager, and handling escalated calls. This is in addition to continuing to work as a customer service rep.
Option 1- Time and Training will work
As an example of a quick fix- Jane A explains that she is still learning the scheduling software and this is taking several more hours for her to complete the weekly schedule. This has caused her to finish the weekly department report late. She anticipates that she will be on track in a week or two, as she is quickly mastering this complicated tool. You suggest that she has the manager spends a few minutes showing her how he uses shortcuts to expedite that task. After two weeks she is indeed on top of the new assignment’s and on time.
Option 2- Re-evaluate Job Fit and Duties
On the other hand, Jane B seems to be avoiding the weekly reports in favor of taking customer calls. She reports that she has not “had time” to train on the scheduling module. Last week she hastily put together on an incomplete schedule that didn’t provide enough coverage during peak hours. The first two weeks her weekly reports were 5 days late and missing key data. In your conversations, it seems that Jane may lack the planning and organizing competency that these new tasks require to be effective. To be fair, you ask her manager to give her a bit more training on how to do those tasks, to see if training will be the answer. But if she does not start making improvements in a few weeks, you might conclude the pattern of job fit is at work.
Want to learn more?
Find out how about how to identify the three main reasons someone isn’t keeping up (gap in ability, motivation or values) in our webinar “Evaluating Your Current Team for Job Fit.”
See our current webinar schedule and register here: People Plan Webinars
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Aug 26, 2014 | culture, job fit, performance
The following is a version of a conversation I have regularly with clients:
Client: “We really need some help with our sales process. Some of our bids require hours of preparation and document gathering. Our estimator needed extra help as he uses all his time to get vendor estimates and compute the final price. So he had Mary take over the non-pricing part of the bid.”
Diana: “So how did that work?”
Client: “Well, Mary started well, but the day before the bid she seems frazzled and needed the estimator to help her finish the packet.”
Diana: “So did you win the work?”
Client: “No, the bid was disqualified because it was missing two important documents.”
Diana: “Was there a list of all requirements in the bid package?”
Client: “Yup- right in the first two pages, there was a checklist of every required items.”
Diana: “Okay, we have two areas to concentrate.
First, you might want to talk about process improvement—what could be done better for the next bid. (For example, one person is responsible to double-check everything is there 2 days before the bid is due.)
I would suggest you get those involved in the bid process in a room and outline and clarify the ideal process and timeline, and then assign responsibility.”
The second area- Do you see a trend in Mary’s performance in planning of projects and detail orientation? Is she normally prepared with every item needed, well in advance of a deadline? Does she “future pace” what is coming next, reaching out to others to get what she needs to do her part of the project?
Or do you see the frantic last minute dash to pull something together at the last minute, and then something is usually forgotten?”
This is a function of job fit, some people are comfortable working in the moment, and do not typically focus on the future requirements. Some people have the opposite work habits- they setup checklists, verify that the list is complete and double check everything.
Planning and organizing is a competency—a soft skill that is based on our consistent personality traits, and can be somewhat refined and developed. (And you can assess for this in the hiring process with a basic personality assessment).
If you step back and evaluate the trend of someone’s work habits, you will likely see a clear pattern of planning and organizing behaviors and results.
If Mary has not demonstrated a strong competency in planning and organizing, the solution is to give those tasks with someone else who has a stronger competency in this area (higher job fit). And then find short term and less detailed and crucial tasks that are a better job fit for Mary (increase her job fit).
Training and systems are most effective if someone already has the competency/ job fit in that area.
Want to learn more?
Find out how about how to identify the three main reasons someone isn’t keeping up (gap in ability, motivation or values) in our webinar “Evaluating Your Current Team for Job Fit.”
See our current webinar schedule and register here: People Plan Webinars
Image Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
by Diana Southall | Mar 14, 2014 | coaching, job fit, performance
I have always been an advocate for finding and rewarding a great employee. As the People consultant who I worked with years ago was fond of saying, “it’s never the wrong time to hire the right person.”
And I have examples from personal experience in my family business and at clients who found that the right person can make a huge impact on the work environment, productivity, sales and ultimately profit.
But I want to share an astounding story related recently by a woman entrepreneur who is in one of my business groups.
For months, she was frustrated with the results of the manager in her production operation.
Her business coach continued to advise her to recruit and select another manager, but as we all know, recruiting and selection is TIME CONSUMING. And you worry that the person you finally hire may not be any better than the person you have. And then you have to spend time training the new person…. And the list goes on, so we stall and don’t go looking for the Ideal.
At some point she decided that maybe she would at least look for another candidate, so created a profile of the ideal candidate (Lesson 1– do this before recruiting so that you are attracting the Ideal Candidate).
Then she made a list of the job performance results she really needed, key skills and competencies of an ideal production manager. She said that when she systematically wrote this out, it was not what she was originally thought she needed! (Lesson 2– by systematic and clear about your Ideal Candidate.)
Then she placed a local advertisement describing the ideal candidate and the very detailed position requirements and results.
Who applied?- an applicant who was working at a similar larger production facility that had just closed. She interviewed this candidate and found out that he had the industry skills and knowledge, but more importantly management and leadership skills. After a thorough selection process, she was confident this candidate had a good probability of being an A player. (Lesson 3– Validate, don’t just take someone’s word for their capabilities after one interview.)
Fast forward one month after he started to this business results:
- the crew increased from 55% productivity (plus overtime to get orders out) to 100% productivity with no overtime
- the process was running so smoothly the backlog of 2 weeks to get orders shipped dropped to 2 days
- because she was able to contact customers (instead of putting out fires in the production and shipping area) she sold 64% more sales that month!
And how much more did she pay this new manager? The same as the prior one. Even if he wanted 15% more base pay —would he have been worth it? (Did I mention 64% more sales?)
Lesson 4– So you say you don’t have time to find an A player, and you can’t afford one? What would 10% more productivity or sales do for your profit this year?
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
by Diana Southall | Feb 4, 2014 | action plans, job fit, performance
I remember a vivid scene from the movie “Master and Commander” when the captain (Russell Crowe) decided to leave a sailor overboard, instead of saving the crew member but endangering the whole ship. <PS A great movie about leadership, and reminded me of the Hornblower series I read as a nerdy kid.>
Luckily our business is not life or death, and this is a tough decision that you will not have to make.
However, when you choose to keep onboard the crew members who are “dragging down” the team, you are essentially slowing or sinking your ship.
So consider—if everyone fell overboard, who would you “save” and why? (This is sometimes call the lifeboat drill.)
Now you have two lists—one to save (your best performers and solid citizens) and your list of the ones you would leave behind.
Before I get irate comments—let me be clear I am not advocating “throwing someone overboard” as a solution.
What I am suggesting is that you take each person that was on the “leave behind” list and do four important things:
- Systematically and objectively identify this person’s strengths and improvement areas
- Consider how the strengths can be re-deployed into another set of tasks or role
- Create a list of crucial and immediate changes required
- Meet with this employee to discuss 1-3 and create a plan to bring this person back on the crew list
Almost all of your low performance employees can be improved with a combination of change in role and expectations.
You can learn more about how to identify the three main reasons someone isn’t keeping up (gap in ability, motivation or values) in our webinar “Evaluating Your Current Team for Job Fit.”
See our current webinar schedule here: People Plan Webinars
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
