Figuring out what your people want can feel like an intricate puzzle especially when different employees require different things.
However, there are basic things that most employees want from their boss.
At a recent workshop, I asked people: “What makes a great boss – someone who can lead and motivate you”? Here’s what they said about how to encourage everyone to do their best work:
1.Tell me my role and your expectations. This is not micro-managing. It’s called clear direction. It gives people focus and accountability
2. Give me some autonomy. Give them something interesting to work on and trust them with this opportunity.That doesn’t mean you give a brand new person the most difficult account; rather something that will stretch her and not cause major problems.
3. Discipline those who are out of line. I often hear this: “I wish my boss would tell James that this is just unacceptable.” Letting a “star” employee do whatever he wants really hurts the morale of the team.
4. Recognize and praise what I do. Everyone wants to be recognized when they’ve done something right. You can motivate employees by highlighting their strengths and not harping on their weaknesses.
5. Don’t lose your temper. It’s generally not productive and it’s not good leadership. It sets up “kill the messenger” syndrome which means your people will be afraid to tell you critical information.
6. Tell me when I make a mistake. Give employees clear and constructive feedback on areas they need to improve or when they go off track. Don’t wait until you are about to fire them. It’s not right and it may not be legal.
7. Get me excited. Indecisive leaders, or those who keep changing direction, frustrate and make people feel uninspired. Tell them where we’re going, how we’re going to get there and how important they are for success.
Management Success Tip:
It’s very easy to get swamped with your daily activities and forget to execute the basic fundamentals of leading others. The results will be a less productive team and more work for you. It’s worth reviewing these seven tips weekly to make sure you are a great motivating boss.
Many times my executive coaching clients express frustration because others do not meet their expectations. When you set clear agreements at the beginning of a project or new work relationship, you can avoid pitfalls and misunderstandings. Here are some questions to help you set clear agreements in an effective and collaborative “coach approach” manner.
What? – establish the course of action
What do we want to achieve?
What is the scope?
What are the expectations that I have of you and you have of me?
What does success look like and how will it be measured?
What is the current status?
What are the future steps?
Why? – verify the reason
Why is this important?
What is the fundamental purpose?
Who will it affect most if we succeed? If we fail?
What are the consequences of doing nothing?
When? – agree upon the timeline
When do we start?
What is the deadline?
What are the significant milestones?
Who? – decide responsibilities
Who will be responsible for what?
Who will follow up with whom?
Who else needs to know?
How? – determine the method
What will our processes be?
What do we expect in terms of quality and standards of excellence?
How and when do we communicate?
How will we address conflict should it arise?
How will we celebrate success?
Try the What? Why? When? Who? and How? method to set clear agreements and get better results.
Pam Solberg-Tapper MHSA, PCC – I spark entrepreneurial business leaders to set strategy, take action, and get results. How can I help you? Contact me at Pam@coachforsuccess.com ~ www.coachforsuccess.com ~ Linkedin ~ 218-340-3330
How perfect is your memory? When you leave a group meeting, do you walk away remembering everything discussed and decided? If not, keep that pen and pad with you. And, if you’re the one facilitating meetings, it’s especially important for you to record the results of the meeting to keep the group’s commitment and follow-through. Meeting notes are more important than you think, and in fact, looking beyond just meeting minutes, facilitators need to be responsible for the meeting documentation. The documentation from a facilitated session serves as the official record of the results of the meeting. So, how do you know what to record?
At Leadership Strategies, we believe that it is the responsibility of the facilitator to ensure that participants agree with the documentation of the session before the session ends. We accomplish this by getting agreement from the participants that the information recorded by the facilitator during the session represents the official record of the session. In this way, the participants tend to pay closer attention to ensuring that all key information gets recorded during the session. After the session, the facilitator has the notes transcribed, edited and distributed to all participants.
What should be documented in a session? We believe that it is important to document four items in particular:
1. Decisions made during the session
As described in “The Secrets of Starting” chapter in my book, The Secrets of Facilitation, it is important to have a parking board for documenting decisions that are made during the session. Anytime the group reaches a decision, the facilitator should note to the group that a decision has been made and record the decision on the decisions list.
2. Actions assigned during the session
Likewise, anytime the group identifies an action that needs to be taken after the session, the facilitator should note to the group that an action has been identified and record the action on the actions list. Near the end of the session, the facilitator should ask the group to identify the person who should be responsible for making sure each action occurs and the date by when the action is needed.
3. Outstanding issues as a result of the session
In addition to decisions and actions, the facilitator must also be alert to identify times when participants are discussing issues that are outside the scope of the meeting or the current discussion. The facilitator should point out to the group that the issue is something that may be important to discuss but is off focus from the current topic. The facilitator should get agreement from the participant(s) to record the issue on the issues list and then redirect the conversation back to the topic at hand. When the facilitator reviews the issues list at the end of the session, all issues will either be resolved or moved to the action list. Technically, therefore, there will be no outstanding issues to document in the session notes.
4. Relevant analysis and comments made during the session
As the participants progress through the agenda, the facilitator will record comments that are made that pertain to the topic under discussion. Note that with facilitated sessions, the goal is for the group to have ownership of the decisions, issues, actions and analysis. Therefore, it is important NOT to identify in the documentation who made a specific comment.
The final documentation will also include notes added by the facilitator to add clarity or build context for the reader. Consider putting notes added by the facilitator in italics to differentiate these notes from information provided by the participants. So, fellow facilitators, what else do you think is important to record?
I have facilitated Action Learning groups for several decades and taught others to facilitate, as well. While there are numerous pitfalls that a facilitator can fall into, here are some of the most common, especially among new facilitators. Each of the pitfalls can detract from the participation and responsibilities of members in the Action Learning group. Each usually occurs because facilitators mistake their own needs for those of the members. Near the end of this post, I share my ideas for avoiding or recovering from these pitfalls. I encourage you to share your ideas, as well.
Refuge In the Role of Expert
There is tremendous inertia among new facilitators to fall back on the “expert” role, which shores up the facilitator’s confidence, but too often cultivates passivity among group members. Usually, a facilitator is perceived as an expert during the training about the Action Learning process. Therefore, it is natural for members to continue to perceive the facilitator as sharing wisdom from a training role — a role that can inadvertently cripple the success of the facilitation when it should be bringing out the wisdom of the group.
Hijacking the Action Learning
Similarly, it is very seductive to begin padding the Action Learning process with seemingly small and incremental “assignments” which, while shoring up the confidence of the facilitator, also insidiously mutate the Action Learning process into a traditional instructor-led training program. For example, consider an Action Learning program designed to resolve a complex issue in an organization. The new facilitator might have read various articles about a certain new organizational change model that seems very interesting to the facilitator, but that the client and sponsor insist are not compatible to the nature and needs of the organization. Still, the facilitator assigns the model to the group members.
Rescuer Syndrome
This occurs when a facilitator succumbs to the urge to “rescue” a group member who is struggling with a particularly difficult issue. This can occur especially when the struggling member is considering thoughtful questions posed from other group members in a meeting. On those occasions, the facilitator might mistake the struggle to be the result of the failings of his facilitation, the Action Learning process or of other group members. So the facilitator might rescue a member by asking very leading questions or even answering the questions for the member.
Loses Love for Learning
Sometimes a new facilitator also takes refuge in using the same, very comfortable techniques and tools. For example, the facilitator finds a particular set of coaching questions to be especially comfortable and so he consistently asserts that set for the group members. Perhaps Hughes, in Pedler’s “Action Learning in Practice” (p. 109), puts it best, “If and when I begin to … become expert, thinking `I’m getting competent/good/slick at this Action Learning set advising business’ then I think it will be time for me to stop, for certainly my own learning will have stopped then.”
Abandoning Group Wisdom
It is natural for facilitators to have bad days — days when it is very difficult to feel centered when facilitating. On those occasions, it is also natural to sense issues in the group where those issues might not even exist. For example, because the facilitator is feeling especially irritable or impatient, he might conclude that members need to “go deeper” in their questioning. He might interrupt them to insist that they do a better job of questioning because “there’s a deeper level that you’re not reaching yet.”
Some Suggested Practices to Address These Pitfalls
The following practices can help facilitators and group members to avoid, or address, all of these piftalls.
When training group members about Action Learning, empower members to regularly share questions and opinions about the quality of the a) Action Learning program, b) facilitation, c) resources/articles, d) meetings and e) individuals’ results.
Build in time in each meeting for members to share their opinions and reflections about the above aspects.
Build in intentional and systematic program evaluations near the middle and end of the program, that ask about the quality of the above aspects.
When training about Action Learning, also clarify the differences between the roles of the trainer and facilitator, and when each role is best used.
When training group members, show them examples of when the facilitator’s intervention is helpful and when it might not be so helpful.
Review ground rules at the beginning of each meeting, including a ground rule that all opinions are honored.
Have a very brief portion of the agenda dedicated to sharing interesting materials that are not directly related to the program, when needed, but be sure to clarify the purpose of the materials and to review them outside of the meeting.
If the facilitator senses that the presenter is struggling or is not getting value during a meeting, then ask the presenter, “Are we being helpful to you?” and then let the presenter reflect on the quality of the help that he is getting. The presenter might be finding tremendous value, even though the facilitator does not think so.
If the facilitator is asked by the group to train about a certain practice that typically is not part of the Action Learning program or process, then he should make time outside of the meeting to do that training. On those occasions, the facilitator might say, “I’m putting on my ‘trainer hat’ for now, and will put on my ‘facilitator hat’ when we’re back in our Action Learning session again.”
When the facilitator feels excited about offering a new article or other resource, he should always collaborate with the client, sponsor and group members to be sure that the resource is focused on the aims of the program.
Join a peer group of facilitators to share feedback and learning from these experiences and pitfalls.
Summary
Paulo Freire, in “Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to Guinea-Bissau” provides what might be the most accurate description of the most effective form of help provided by the facilitator role: “Authentic help means that all who are involved help each other mutually, growing together in the common effort to understand the reality which they seek to transform. Only through such praxis — in which those who help and those who are being helped help each other simultaneously — can the act of helping become free from the distortion in which the helper dominates the helped.”
? What do you think? Are there other pitfalls? Other ways to avoid them?
Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD is a principal consultant in Action Learning Source, an alliance that offers Action Learning workshops and services. For more information, see ActionLearningSource.com
Conjure up the term “bad boss” and what comes to mind? Scenes of managers, berating subordinates in public or taking credit for other people’s work or saying one thing and doing another Feel free to continue — I’m sure you have more examples.
According to the HBR Blog post Are You Sure You’re Not a Bad Boss?, “Our research suggests that the offensive actions so often associated with being a bad boss make up less than 20% of the behavior that actually defines the worst bosses.”
What Does? They found, after analyzing the behavior of 30,000 managers as seen through the eyes of some 300,000 of their peers, direct reports, and bosses – that the sins of the bad boss are far more often not the appalling things they do; rather it’s the critical things they don’t do.
Here Are the Five Fatal Sins
1. Failure to walk the talk.
Saying one thing and doing another is the fastest way to lose the trust and credibility of those you lead. The worst offenders here also pose a wider threat as dangerous role models — creating the risk that their organizations will degenerate if others behave as they do. 2. A lack of clear vision and direction. Poor leaders have a murky view of the future. They don’t know precisely what direction to take and are usually unwilling to communicate about the future, leaving their subordinates with no clear path forward. 3. Failure to improve and learn from mistakes. Arrogance and complacency combine in the poorest leaders as they rise, causing them to come to the dangerous conclusion that they’ve reached a stage in their careers where development is no longer required. This leads unfortunately to repeating the same mistakes over and over. 4. An inability to collaborate and be a team player. Poor leaders avoid their peers, act independently, fail to develop positive relations with colleagues. The worst of them view work as a competition and their colleagues as opponents. 5. Acceptance of mediocre performance in place of excellent results. The poorest leaders did not set stretch goals, inadvertently encouraging mediocre performance by letting people coast along doing less work, less well than their counterparts working for better managers.
What About You? Do you exhibit any of these fatal sins? The post concludes with this thought: “You could be traveling down this road right now with no hint that anything’s amiss. No hint, that is, unless you take the time to consider not just what kind of a leader you are, but what kind you’re not.”
Management Success Tip:
As we can see a bad boss it’s not only a person who yells, who is in a bad mood all the time or someone who doesn’t care about the people. A bad boss could be the one who doesn’t know how to be a leader: one who guides, inspires, influences and motivates. Also see What Makes a Great Boss
In a meeting or facilitated session, it is typical for participants to be initially reserved and very willing to allow others to speak first. As a result, it is not unusual for the first question that the facilitator asks to be met with complete and utter silence! This can be demoralizing for a facilitator, especially when it occurs at the beginning of a session – that time when you are hoping for high energy and great interaction. A great technique for maintaining focus within a group – in addition to the checkpoint you read about in my earlier blog – is warming up the group.
The Secret to Warming Up a Group
Ask two questions that require a non-verbal response.
To avoid getting silence when asking your first question, warm-up the group by first asking at least two questions that require a non-verbal response.
The key to the warm-up technique is to ask at least two questions that require a non-verbal response. Since the pre-questions you ask should lead up to your primary question, you should plan these pre-questions carefully.
Sample: Warming Up a Group
In this sample, the facilitator’s primary question is: “What are the benefits of planning?” Note the questions the facilitator asks and the actions the facilitator takes before asking the primary question.
Facilitator How many people here have been involved with a project that wasn’t well planned from the beginning? (Raise your own hand.)
Facilitator It was somewhat difficult, wasn’t it? (Nod your head.)
Facilitator You may have had problems such as a lack of understanding of the purpose, people unclear of roles, lack of commitment to action and so on. So there are some real benefits to planning, aren’t there? (Nod your head.)
Facilitator Let’s name a few. What are the benefits of planning? Who can tell me one? (Raise your own hand. Call on someone whose hand also goes up.)
The Finer Points of Warming Up a Group
The warm-up technique is effective in getting people responding to you, first non-verbally, then verbally. By twice getting the participants to nod their heads or raise their hands, you have greatly increased the likelihood that, when you ask that first question and raise your hand, one or more people will raise their hands to offer a response.
The timing of your gestures is important in the warm-up. You should raise your hand or nod your head while you are asking the question. This way, the participants will know what action you want them to take before you finish asking the question, and they can begin responding right away.
What are some other techniques you use to keep a group focused in a meeting?
I admit, this took some research! Let’s start by defining what we are trying to do, Wikipedia to the rescue.
Ethos: Greek, meaning character, used to describe guiding beliefs, ideals, and the spirit which motivates them.
Community: a group whose intention, beliefs, resources preferences, needs and risks affect and shape its identity. This captures how organizational culture emerges from our work together and our ethos.
The leadership challenge is to understand how to embed these so that we can use them to influence our company’s success (sustained competitiveness and customer satisfaction). Peter Block provides a good starting point. He notes that community is a structure of belonging. Getting the structure right allows trust, connection, security, and feeling valued to emerge (Etienne Wenger). When these describe the organizational identity it is a small step to self-organizing teams, collaboration, continuous improvement, quality, fast development times, and a customer-centric focus. Whether emphasized or assumed, community and ethos are core to all five domains in our intersection.
To embed the Ethos of Community two concepts emerge at the intersection to create a structure of belonging: Communities of Practice and Leader/Teachers.
Communities of Practice (COP). If teams are the fractal unit from which all other organizational units arise, COP are the fractal unit at all levels of shared enterprise over time. The primary assumption from Wenger’s research is that: engaging in the social practice of forming COP is the foundational process by which we learn (knowledge creation) and become who we are (organizational culture). Joint enterprise (supported by mutual engagement and shared repertoire) generates accountability, coherence, productive disagreement, collaboration, and the effective use of resources to meet constraints. This produces a pragmatic resourcefulness that is innovative at the local level and results in continuous improvement, self-organization, and “individuals and interactions” as a driving force for change. As Wenger points out, “Even though [the COP] does not transcend or transform its institutional conditions in any dramatic fashion, it nonetheless responds to [organizational] conditions in ways that are not determined by the institution. To do what they are expected to do [they] produce a practice with an inventiveness that is all theirs.” (1)
Network analysis can illuminate COP and uncover the connectivity between them, mapping these networks like we map value and process. Leaders can then seek out Communities of Practice and convert their collective thinking into organizational action. Mapping community relationships and identifying key COP members allows managers to respond to opportunities and challenges quickly, using existing connections and dependencies. “We call this a latent network view because it discloses a group that could be leveraged in the future.” (2) This provides a means of overcoming organizational fragmentation and taking advantage of built-in resiliency. From a management perspective, then, we have a new means of recognizing, and taking advantage of, structured localness that goes far beyond co-location.
Leader/Teachers: When a new process is adopted, “train everyone” makes sense. Thereafter, the work itself provides a platform for personal and personnel development. This weaves together competency, responsibility, accountability, and contribution. Toyota places this at the center of continuous improvement, achieved through the interactions of Mentors and Mentees. The Toyota Leader/Teacher is a way of managing that has its roots in ethos and can be traced back to GE’s Crotonville Leadership Development Center and the work of Noel Tichy. (3)
When embedding an ethos of community, job assignments, team composition, and even meetings become a forum for action learning.Two assumptions are core to this idea: that learning is a social event and that teaching is the most effective means of leadership. Tichy pioneered the idea of “leaders at every level” built on the practice of leadership as a “Teachable Point of View (TPOV)” rather than subject matter expertise. Becoming a great Leader/Learner requires some new management activities: time for personal reflection, creation of a TPOV, the ability to connect to others and engage when the teachable moment presents itself, inquiry and substantive exchanges that seek to discover problems and how people are thinking about solving them, and openness and listening as a learner (often called “beginners mind”).
Teachable moments form a structure of belonging. They allow leader/teachers to pull from their TPOV, a personal backlog of learning experiences and ways of “seeing”, and engage with their learning partner(s) to create a transformational idea and new responses and behaviors. Recall Satir’s change cycle and now view it as a learning cycle. As leader/teachers, and as learners ourselves, we are watching for transformational ideas to emerge from the intersection of the situation, previous experience and knowledge, the current learning conversation, insight, and understanding. When that happens we have a teachable moment, all participants are learners and teachers, and actionable change is the outcome.
Leader as Social Architect
No matter how broad or limited your scope of leadership, everyone has the potential to engage in Communities of Practice and be a Leader/Teacher. To close let me quote a management great, Robert Greenleaf, that summarizes the structure of belonging we can all achieve every day:
“Everyone who aspires to strength should consciously practice listening, regularly. Every week, set aside an hour to listen to somebody who might have something to say that will be of interest. It should be conscious practice in which all of the impulses to argue, inform, judge, and “straighten out” the other person are denied. Every response should be calculated to reflect interest, understanding, [and] seeking for more knowledge. Practice listening for brief periods, too. Just thirty seconds of concentrated listening may make the difference between understanding and not understanding something important.” (4)
1 Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
2 Cross, Rob and Parker, Andrew. The Hidden Power of Social Networks. Harvard Business School Press, 2004.
3 Tichy, Noel. The Cycle of Leadership. Harper Business, 2002.
4 Greenleaf, Robert. On Becoming A Servant Leader. Jossey-Bass, 1996.
Dr. Carol Mase is an executive coach who challenges leaders and their organizations to think differently about the world and how they can achieve their fullest potential. Her unique background applies the principles of business, biology, psychology, and physics, to all levels of the organization. She has worked as an entrepreneur, consultant and pharmaceutical executive introducing fresh ideas that produce innovation and adaptive change.
Leadership is a team sport not a superstar sport. What happens over time is that some managers begin to believe it’s all about them. It’s not, it’s just the opposite. It’s about the people they lead.
Allan Ditchfield, former executive at AT&T, realized that you cannot lead without getting involved.
“When leaders remain behind their desks, they loose touch with reality – the key issues with their employees, and most importantly, the key issues with their customers.”
So he created “Donuts with Ditch”. It was a regular scheduled coffee and donuts session with no more than 10 people, chosen randomly, from different parts of his business unit. It was a forum to hear people’s concerns and to gather information as well as get feedback about some of the real issues that are getting in the way of people’s jobs.
He asked one question:
“What’s getting in the way of you doing your jobs well and serving our customers?”
He listened intently, took notes and followed up with answers and solutions. The most important ingredient for success was not the donuts but rather the trust that had been established between him and the employees. He had what he called a sacred open door. No ones’ going to be hurt by what they say. That there will be no retaliation. He lived by that rule. He walked the talk and therefore people believed him and trusted him.
Management Success Tip:
This simple two way communication tool was the grease that kept the operational engine humming. It’s a great example of how leaders can build relationships with their people, create conditions that encourage two-way communication and also get real time information about operational and customer service problems before they turn into big hairy monsters that will eat up time, energy and resources. Also see Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For
In Wally Bock’s Three Start Leadership Blog, I saw this boss’s tip of the Day:
Boss’s Tip of the Day: Protect your people
So often we forget this. So often we worry too much about our own career and our own protection. We forget that our success is determined by their success.
This was a lesson I learned early in my career. Someone told me that as a manager, my success could only be measured by the success of my weakest team member. That took a little while to set in, but once it did and once I really understood its meaning, my team became much more successful. With that came my success.
Leadership has nothing to do with you and your title. Leadership requires that someone is following you and leaders who don’t protect lose followers. Protection builds trust and loyalty, things that also drive discretionary effort. If you want your people to put in the extra time or effort when needed, protect them. If you want them to stand up for you, protect them. If you want them to value your opinion or direction, protect them. If you want candor, protect them.
What advice for boss’s can you add?
heri Mazurek is a training and human resource professional with over 16 years of management experience, and is skilled in all areas of employee management and human resource functions, with a specialty in learning and development. She is available to help you with your Human Resources and Training needs on a contract basis. For more information send an email to smazurek0615@gmail.com. Follow me on twitter @Sherimaz
Simply put, Action Learning is a group-based process that is proven to generate innovative and creative solutions to address complex problems and opportunities for individuals, teams and organizations.
Action Learning is an ongoing, highly focused process among 4-8 group members who help each other to address real, current, important problems or opportunities in their lives or work – and learn at the same time.
In highly structured, Action Learning meetings, members help each other, primarily by sharing thoughtful questions to help report, clarify and frame the priorities and then to generate relevant and realistic actions to address the priorities. The questioning is a hallmark of Action Learning.
Another hallmark is that members take those actions between meetings. The actions are selected to make an impact on the priority and to generate learning.
Members accomplish deep and significant learning, especially from reflecting on the questions and the results of their actions between meetings.
There are different perspectives and “schools” of Action Learning, for example, so people believe that Action Learning should include only questions and that any statements are only in response to questions. Others believe there’s a role for advice. This diversity adds to the richness and applicability of Action Learning.
Reg Revans originated Action Learning in the 1930s in the United Kingdom. Today, it’s commonplace in the vast majority of highly effective learning and development programs of organizations around the world.
Here are several quotes that can enhance your understanding of Action Learning.
“…. learning … consists mainly in their new perceptions of what they are doing and in their changed interpretations of their past experiences.”
— Reginald Revans, original developer of Action Learning
“Action Learning is a process underpinned by a belief in individual potential: a way of learning from our actions, and from what happens to us, and around us, by taking the time to question, understand and reflect, to gain insights, and consider how to act in the future.”
— Krystyna Weinstein, in “Action Learning: A Practical Guide”
Mike Pedler and Christine Abbott wrote “… the acid test is whether people concerned are helping each other to take action on their problems and challenges, and whether they are learning from this work” (Facilitating Action Learning, McGraw Hill, 2013, p. 20).
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