Management vs. leadership?

An often debated and analyzed question is the difference between the role of a manager and a leader.  I would claim that both must include portions of each, and the roles are rather a continuum than a stark division. The leader’s key role is envisioning the future and the manager’s is focusing on executing that vision, but leaders must also be able to execute, and managers to envision. It’s all about shifting emphasis, which can be good news for leadership development.

As managers are more focused on execution, and getting things done through their team members, I insist that the two core skills for a manager are always performance management and employee development. The right way to identify developmental priorities is to do a competency analysis, but I assure you, these two core competencies will be there. Performance management would include skills like goal setting, informal feedback, coaching, corrective dialogues and evaluating performance. Goal setting also means the ability to link the vision and the organizational goals to the day-to-day work of the team members. Employee development encompasses interviewing skills, career dialogues, development planning and coaching. Just having these two fundamentals covered guarantees a solid management base for execution. The other competencies vary based on organization culture and strategic priorities.

Leadership is all about change. Great leaders must be able to envision the future and articulate it with clarity so that the vision is so compelling that they can rally the troops to support the strategic moves that are critical for the organization. To be able to envision the future, they have to be comfortable with a certain level of ambiguity and willing to take calculated risks. The execution piece is still there: They must know how to manage the organization culture and its processes to guarantee that the results are met.

Whether it’s the leader or the manager, they must continuously build their functional, operational and business acumen to earn and maintain their credibility. Complexity increases as they climb the management ladder.

Many companies struggle with their middle management development. This is the twilight zone where both management and leadership skills are required. It is the testing ground on who will make it to the highest levels of leadership. Middle managers must balance both short term execution and long term change leadership priorities, while demands and complexity are increasing for them. They must get very good at the management fundamentals while starting to adapt to the higher level leadership skills.

It’s not a question of management OR leadership, it’s a question of how much of each. Which management and leadership competencies are important in your organization?

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Talent resolutions for the New Year

Human resources processes, human capital management and workforce productivity all sound so complex and demanding, with so many moving parts to manage. There are employee handbooks and policies to worry about. There are rules and regulations. How is the management to know what to do with the employee base? Although there are certainly some things that are required by the law, here are three guiding principles that will get you far. Make them your New Year’s resolutions, if you are not already following them.

1. Don’t compromise on talent

Decide what kind of talent will get you where you want to be. Understand what drives performance in your business. Be as specific as you can. Don’t add any unnecessary criteria to narrow your talent pool to choose from. Then go after it. When you hire, don’t bring in anyone else except those who meet your standards. When you promote internally, be just as selective.

2. Hold people accountable

If you want a high-performance culture, accountability is a basic cornerstone of it. The building blocks are so simple, yet seem to be so hard to put into practice. Set clear goals. Set clear expectations for behaviors. Create an environment for open feedback and teach everyone to give feedback to each other. Give both positive and constructive feedback. Track results on an on-going basis. Correct performance as soon as it starts veering off track. Celebrate successes.

3. Invest in your people

Investment in people has significantly higher ROI than investment in capital equipment. People learn, grow and develop. Make the investment purposeful and intentional. Invest time in your people by having weekly meetings with managers, communication meetings by the leaders and also by having career dialogues annually. Invest in mentoring, coaching and training. Plan career ladders and growth opportunities. Most importantly, pay attention to your people. Treat them as individuals, all with a valuable contribution to make.

With these three resolutions, you can’t go wrong.

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Good intentions gone wrong

I was shopping at my neighborhood grocery store and happened to make an impulse purchase for a Christmas present. As I was standing in the line, I noticed a sign that advertised free gift wrapping and was thrilled: The gift was large and lumpy, and I was not looking forward to wrestling with it. I would be happy to delegate it to someone more talented. Little did I know that I was going to enter a gift wrapping nightmare as a result of typical performance management failures.

Missing process and communication

I didn’t have much time, so I wanted to make sure I was going to the right place. As I was at the check-out desk, I asked the associate about the offer. Her answer: “Ummm… What gift wrapping?” I pointed at the sign glued to her post, and she hesitantly pointed me to Customer Service.

Missing talent and skills

As I walked towards the Customer Service, I asked another associate about the gift wrapping. He knew to point me to the department that was in charge of wrapping, and walked with me. Unfortunately, nobody was there. The lights were off, although I could see a couple of rolls of gift paper. The associate started paging people. The first person who got there assured me that I wouldn’t want him to wrap my gift. More people were paged. Eventually they found two young ladies who were up to the challenge.

Missing tools and resources

The eager associates asked for my preference for the wrapping paper, and I was looking forward to a fast resolution. I had already waited 15 minutes and was starting to get second thoughts. Not so fast! There were no scissors or tape at the gift wrapping station. The other associate was ready to rip a product from the shelf to produce scissors for the transaction. After a frantic search through the drawers, we were ready to make some progress.

Hooray, after almost half an hour, I had my gift wrapped. The employees were doing everything they could with their positive attitude and creativity to compensate for the corporate blunders. I can’t say my experience was truly positive. I ended up being the guinea pig to trigger some process improvement in their gift wrapping offer. If their company culture works, the employees will bring up input and ideas to improve the customer experience. Everything that went wrong was very simple to prevent:

• Communicate the process and expectations to your employees.
• Ensure you have the right people with right skills in place.
• Provide tools and resources for success.

Are you ready to make your employees successful?

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My working definition of talent management

Believe me, there are tons of frameworks for talent management out there. Many of them are quite complicated with multiple parts and fancy words. I am going to introduce one that is a bit easier to work with and get your arms around.

Talent management starts with performance management. If you don’t know what levels of talent you have to work with, the rest of the processes will be pretty much useless. Performance management helps you identify solid performers who are the bread and butter for your company operations, star performers who will be your future leaders, and low performers you need to deal with one way or another. This part of performance management is useful for talent management purposes. (Do not forget that real performance management that drives performance happens on a daily basis and is dependent on skilled managers. Performance ratings have nothing to do with this aspect of performance management!)

Once you have visibility to your performance levels, you can turn on follow-up talent processes. Smart companies practice differentiated investment in their talent: Their best talent gets the most rewards as well as special developmental plans that can feed into the leadership and expert pipelines. Investment in strengths has the highest return. Talent management feeds into rewards planning, annual training planning and succession planning. It creates company rigor around individual development plans as well as career plans. One branch of talent management feeds into the HR process of performance improvement plans: the low performing talent will improve or will be managed out.

Let’s look at the beginning of the talent management process. For companies to have A talent, they must grow or bring A talent in. Talent management secures a robust selection process that aligns with the organization’s talent goals. Companies with a good talent culture do not compromise in their selection process just to fill an opening. They also have a comprehensive onboarding process, which is part of talent management.

To enable a well functioning talent management process, a foundation of clear competencies and metrics is needed. Competencies are based on the organization’s core values, top performer qualities, future strategies and functional requirements. As any world-class process, continuous improvement requires solid metrics for monitoring progress.

An essential part of an organization’s competitive edge comes from its culture. Talent management intentionally monitors and manages the culture, the employee engagement and the diversity of its workforce.  If you have introduced any new process or initiative, you know well that process compliance only gets so far. A true talent culture is in the fabric of how every employee and manager thinks and acts. When talent is perceived as truly the most important asset of the organization, you are starting to get where you need to be with talent management.

If you need help with talent management processes, contact Liisa Pursiheimo-Marcks at liisa@forteconsulting.biz or at 512-484 8263.

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It’s performance evaluation time!

Most agree that the best performers should get the best rewards

The announcements and instructions have not got out yet, but rest assured that HR is already preparing for annual reviews. Many organizations align their performance management process with the calendar year and business planning cycle: Evaluations are done at the end of the year, to enable pay for performance in Q1. While everyone will spend extra hours to create a list of ratings, let’s keep one thing in mind: while performance ratings are an important administrative tool – they do not increase performance.

Performance ratings are an important vehicle for talent management, because they provide more objective data into differentiated rewards planning, investment in training and development as well as succession planning. Without performance ratings, it would be near impossible to have a consistent approach to salary increases and bonuses, unless everyone got exactly the same amount. Based on research, employees do not feel that would be fair. Everyone expects that high performers should get higher rewards than the rest. It also makes sense that the company wants to invest more in developing them and pay special attention to them when looking at the future leadership pool. The only way to identify these individuals in a larger company is with a rating.

The distaste with performance evaluations comes from many directions. First off, there is so much obsession with the actual rating. Managers and employees should keep in mind that it is just an identifier and an administrative tool. What really matters is the on-going dialogue between the employee and the manager. The performance review is not the time to break news about shortcomings in performance – that should be done immediately when issues arise. The review is a great time to step back, look at next year’s goals and have a good developmental discussion on what to learn next. That is the best ROI for the time spent together.

The other issue employees frequently take with performance ratings is the perceived subjectivity. As the rating does have implications on the level of investment in the employee, it is important that both managers and employees are clear about the performance standards. 90% of employees believe they are above average performers. There are workshops to help managers to get calibrated on performance standards before the evaluation process. HR and next level managers can then monitor typical rater bias as necessary.

Research shows that annual reviews don’t really impact performance – informal feedback does. However, your performance dialogue does have an impact on an equally important metric: retention. Take this time to connect with your employees. Talk more about the reasons why they are staying and what you can do help them be more productive.

To schedule a performance standards calibration session and to prep your managers for annual reviews that drive retention, contact liisa@forteconsulting.biz / 512-484 8263

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Coaching: Make it a daily habit

Coaching is a gift

Coaching – what is it really? We have sports coaches, all the way from the little league to the ones who make millions. We have career coaches, business coaches and life coaches. Managers are expected to coach their employees, but a recent study by Leadership IQ shows that two thirds of employees feel they are not even receiving enough attention, let alone coaching. Perhaps if we didn’t make coaching sound like something so formidable, managers would take up on doing it on a regular basis.

There are two main types of coaching: formal and informal. Good coaches use both. Formal coaching is a goal and process oriented approach, while informal coaching is an on-going effort to turn every opportunity into learning, looking for teachable moments.

Formal coaching is a good choice, when there is a specific goal and a specific timeframe to be met. Sometimes, the employee has an aggressive vision of leapfrogging to the next level of skill and expertise. Other times, a performance improvement plan is required to address a productivity or behavioral issue. Professional coaches often use formal coaching plans to help their clients stay focused on their goals, and integrate other resources to provide informal coaching. The formal coaching process typically includes an analysis phase, goal setting, an action plan for improvement, identification of resources and support, setting of milestones, and agreement on the review schedule for monitoring progress.

Informal coaching happens daily. It should happen daily. If you think of sports, formal coaching would be the practices, informal coaching would be the coach’s feedback during the game and the debriefing after the game. Learn as you go. Perhaps you show a handy shortcut key as you walk by. You prep together for an important presentation. You may walk through a complex project plan with your team and give them tips based on your experience. Or, you sit down with your employee after they messed up and discuss together how to prevent it from happening again.

Feedback is an important element of both coaching approaches. Objective and specific feedback, followed by a gentle dialogue of a better way to approach the situation, has the greatest value for the receiver.  When the objective is to learn and not to evaluate, coaching becomes a daily gift, and not an administrative task.

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Feedback is a gift

Nothing is as bittersweet as receiving honest feedback on a weakness – unknown, or all too familiar. It hurts, yet at the same time it is like a gate opening to an unexplored path. You can give it a shot. This could be that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand your capabilities, and someone just gave the tip for free. If you could just stop shuddering from seeing that ugly picture of yourself, courtesy of a friend holding up a mirror. So embarrassing, yet so liberating. Is there any way we can get comfortable with feedback?

Our first instinct is to protect ourselves from constructive feedback. We naturally love the praise and shun the critique. People who don’t know us very well or who don’t care enough tend to give us what we want instead of what we need. The only way to ensure that we get it all is to assure others that we can handle it. Talk about feedback and how important it is for you. Ask for feedback. The more specific things you ask, the more specific answers you will get. Isn’t it funny that sometimes the most burning issue on your mind is the hardest to ask? Find people you trust who will answer with kindness and honesty.

Your reaction to feedback determines whether the person will continue giving you feedback in the future. This should be your utmost concern when you receive feedback. If this is a person you would like to hear from again, focus all your energy to genuinely thank for the feedback, no matter what the message is. Keep in mind that even if you disagree with the feedback, this is true perception, important enough to be shared with you. Your decision now is whether you want to change this person’s perception about you. If someone thinks you are not a team player, what are you going to do about it? You can only change perception by actions; you can rarely talk people out of a perception.

The best quality of feedback is a dialogue. Two or more people share their perceptions in the spirit of learning and cooperation. It requires high self esteem and respect for others to go on the journey to share how you see others around you. In the spirit of curiosity instead of seeing everything in black and white, it is possible to start seeing two sides of many stories. Entering the dialogue with the assumption that everyone operates with the best intentions but sometimes things go wrong opens new avenues for understanding everyone’s perspective. Learning from mistakes is also a gift.

Winning organizations weave into their cultural fabric the habit of open feedback and learning from mistakes. They create continuous opportunities for sharing feedback, and coach their employees in basic feedback skills. This way, feedback stops being a scary thing of evaluations and becomes a bridge to self awareness and growth.

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Working with slackers

Pretty much everyone has experienced working with coworkers who are not carrying their weight on the team. It creates feelings of unfairness and even helplessness or hostility when the situation drags on. High performing team members must cover for their coworker, usually for little or no reward. They look to the manager to do something about the situation and don’t understand when insufficient attempts are done to correct the performance of the one who is slowing down the whole operation. There is no way around it, low performance does not go away by itself; it has to be addressed proactively. This responsibility falls on the managers and the company.

The reasons for low performance are many and not all are even the fault of the employee. Sometimes the employee just doesn’t have the skills for the job, or the orientation for the new job is ‘sink or swim’. I was at Waffle House a few weeks ago, and the bacon cook was getting the evil eye from the rest of the staff as he was falling behind on the orders. He was doing his darndest to catch up, but it was not looking good for him. The key to high performing teams is a solid selection process. Companies who know what creates high performance go looking for it, using assessments and structured interviews. They don’t settle for warm bodies.

Personal issues can be a significant distraction. Good managers know how to help their employees navigate through tough times, creating flexibility where needed, while expecting solid performance on an on-going basis. The solution should not be just piling it on the team to cover someone else’s last minute emergencies.

Many performance problems originate from insufficient organizational support. It would be wise of the manager to analyze the work process and systems, as well as the tools and resources available before jumping to conclusions about the employee’s work ethics. Obviously, if the whole team is working with the same support and only one is lagging, something else is going on.

Work relationships are their own Pandora’s box. At some highly political workplaces, who-knows-who may determine the results more than the effort put into the projects. One person told me about a work group where the low performer was the business owner’s friend, so all the team could do was to wring their hands and pick up the slack. If two coworkers can’t resolve their inflamed work relationship, the manager must step in. (Career advice: If you need your manager to referee, it is not a good pattern for your career; get coaching help now.)

In addition to work relationships, other work behaviors lead to performance problems. Whether it is communication style, forgetfulness or the lack of eye contact with customers, these behavior issues tend to escalate over time. The proactive manager nips them in the bud by using informal feedback. Informal coaching supports feedback. If all else fails, formal coaching and performance improvement plans are tools to use to make sure that it is the manager who takes care of the performance issues and not the team.

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Don’t let bells and whistles overshadow true performance management

The performance management systems are improving release after release. There are more automated functionalities, more options and special features. The purpose is to relieve the managers and HR from the administrative burden that the annual reviews place on them. The system alerts push managers to do what they are supposed to do: manage the performance of their employees. However, some of the fancy features may do just the opposite.

One of the popular features is goal cascading. It allows the company to display and sometimes delegate goals downstream the organizational hierarchy. Goal alignment is important for uniting the workforce behind the company priorities. There is a risk however that the managers might think that just pushing the button in the performance management system is enough to get everyone rallied around the team goals. The system should not replace company and team meetings where the management explains why the goals are important and how they relate to everyone’s individual goals. If the employees can participate in the goal setting process, it also increases their engagement. Cascading the goals in the system for administrative purposes after all the interaction has taken place is fine, as long as the system does not take over the discourse.

The idea of the performance management system pushing for more frequent reviews sounds like a great idea at first. Quarterly or monthly reviews could mean so much more feedback for employees compared to what they used to receive before. There is nothing wrong with having a monthly or quarterly review to step back and make sure the priorities and the development plan are still on the right track. However, if the company wants to drive high performance, it should not send the message that monthly or quarterly review is enough feedback. Informal feedback needs to be timely, based on observed performance, not driven by system alerts. Letting managers settle for less creates a culture that looks at feedback as evaluative instead of developmental. The way to increase the quality and amount of feedback is not through system alerts but through clear expectations and training managers.

The improved systems also provide a more user friendly and more granular way to rate and evaluate employee performance. You can find color coding, sliding scales and many ways to compare employees. Although the scales may help the managers in the decision making regarding the ratings, the system does not change the fact that the manager still is the one responsible for the developmental discussion with the employee. No matter how granular the rating is, the most useful information is what the manager sees as the employee’s strengths and the areas for development. A forward looking dialogue focusing on a few concrete actions is more powerful than anything you can see in the most advanced performance management system.

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Talent management in high tech – Part 1: Talent acquisition, rewards and performance

 

Source: Bersin & Associates

 

Bersin and Associates just released their new framework for talent management. In my opinion, it’s an excellent illustration of what’s involved in building a high performing workforce. You start with the workforce strategy. You attract the right talent that fits your plan. You manage performance, select the rewards that fit your strategy, and develop your employees. You create the right environment to engage your employees. You develop managers and groom leaders. You shape your culture to win. When you optimize each building block, just listen to your organization humming. Each industry has its own challenges and advantages. In today’s and next week’s blog I will examine high tech.

High tech is characterized by its highly skilled workforce. Often the entry level expectation is at least a bachelor’s degree. In engineering, there is fierce competition for some specialized talent, whether it is a certain engineering field, or a rare combination of software language skills. In marketing and sales, the companies are looking for the sweet spot of technical background and functional expertise, trying to find the right balance between the two. In many instances, a complex sales process is involved, which requires business acumen, seasoned opportunity management and the account management skills of the sales people. As in many other industries, if the high tech company manufactures it products, its logistics function, support staff and managers must be increasingly familiar with outsourcing and off shoring. As the applicants are tech savvy, more and more recruiters are turning to social media to source the candidates.

As the applicants are screened, a high IQ is just table stakes. What differentiates candidates is their EQ – emotional intelligence. High tech companies develop new products in a team based environment with tight schedules. Hitting the market window is critical for revenue and profit targets. The employees must be collaborative and able to adapt to change and a fast pace.

When it comes to rewards, most high tech companies’ reward philosophy is pay for performance. Merit increases, bonuses and equity are distributed based on the performance levels of the employees. This creates some requirements on the performance management process and management skills. The stakes are higher for a fair performance evaluation, when the employee’s compensation is linked to the manager’s assessment. Many companies use some type of forced or guided distribution to be able to manage their rewards budget – not everyone can get the highest rating and richest reward package. Manager training and guidance on consistent performance standards is another way to get the ratings closer to a normal curve. When forced distribution processes are not managed and communicated well, they pose challenges in creating a competitive culture and a perception of internal politics, and some high tech companies have faced employee lash out on this practice.

Next week: Talent management in high tech – Part 2: Management development, succession planning, culture

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