Over the last couple of month, I have written many articles extolling the benefits of empowering your employees. In case you have not read them, the Coles Notes version of the concept is that you are no longer a manager but a coach. Your job is to train and support your people. Your success is determined by their success.

So what should you do to ensure their success?

Growth Most of your employees should be knowledge workers and they want a clear path for growth. For some, growth means going up the corporate ladder and for others it simply means developing new skills. Determine the skillset of each of your players then develop a plan to help them achieve it.
Give Responsibility After coaching and working with your people, you will quickly determine who has the capacity for additional responsibility [after growth and development]. Who is ready to move to a higher level of performance? Find those people and give them the responsibility and accountability.
Give Accountability Once you have given these select few more responsibility, you need to give them the accountability to deliver. Accountability means they have to find creative ways to “make things happen”. Make them accountable.
Get out of their way Nothing kills creativity and spirit like a manager that second guesses everything an employee does. Unless they give you a reason to doubt your decision to give them the responsibility, butt out. Read my articles on delegation.

Keep it simple

Go to the bookstore and check out the management section. You will be overwhelmed by the hundreds of authors hawking their latest and greatest “management breakthrough”. After years of work as a management consultant, I came to the realization that often the most powerful tools are the simplest and time-tested ones.

Remember to treat your people like you would like to be treated. Recognize the good, and coach when things go bad. Nothing is more powerful than loyal employees willing to go out of their way to support you. Support your people and they will support you.

Remember to lead with honesty and integrity, two character traits that cannot be faked.

When should you confront a co-worker?

January 28, 2011Management, Organization, Rapport, Team buildingEdward Kiledjian

The Rule of 3

Over the years, I have had the opportunity to participate in many interesting activities, from parachuting and bungee jumping to traveling and trying new exotic cuisines. A long time ago, I learned a simple trick called the rule of three. The basic breakdown is:

First time Just do the activity
Second time Learn how to do it properly
Third time Do it again to determine if you like or enjoy it

In a professional setting

This has served me well, and over the years I have started to use this for other aspects of my life. One good example is related to a question I get asked very often by colleagues and employees “When should I confront an annoying colleague?”

Obviously before you confront someone, you want to ensure the annoying habit is actually a habit and not just a one off incident. So think of it with the “Rule of three framework”.

First time This is the first time you notice this action or behavior
Second time This time you notice exactly what is being done and confirm that this was not a one off anomaly. Think of exactly what the other person is doing and why it bothers you. What is motivating the other person to do this?
Third time This is the time you confront the offender. You now know that this is a habit, it has happened multiple times and you now understand exactly why it troubles you.

Power in simplicity

In his book “Getting Things done”, David Allen uses imagery to explain the concept of being cool and in control: “Mind like water”. He explains that when you throw a pebble in a lake, water always reacts with the appropriate level of response; it never over or under reacts.

In our hectic lives, we sometime overreact when having a bad day and later regret our actions. Using the rule of three will force to you react calmly and only after having carefully considered the situation. Your cool confidence will be noticed and usually responded to more favorably than simply belching out what comes to mind the first time something happens.

Think of other aspects in your life that can benefit from this rule.

Rule 2 of delegation

January 9, 2011Management, Team building, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian

QuickTip - Setting the right expectations

Early on in my career, I was committed to perfection. Everything had to be done perfectly and methodically. Although the idea of perfection is admirable, you quickly realize that waiting for perfection often means you miss incredible opportunities.

It is often better to get started on the right foot and get it done rather than aim for perfection and miss the bus. How does this apply to delegation? Simple, if you expect perfection from yourself, you will expect it from others. This means you will likely not be satisfied with the quality of the work being performed and will find yourself redoing it all yourself. This will not only frustrate you but steal important time from more important tasks you could be doing. It will also frustrate and demotivate your employees.

If you find yourself questioning the quality of the delegated work, take a moment to perform some introspection.

Are your expectations realistic?
Are you aiming for perfection?
Is the work bad or good? Most often good is the watermark you will have to use to judge most of the activities. Demand perfection only when absolutely critical.
Did you properly communicate your expectations?
Is the person qualified to perform the work you assigned?

Rule 1 of delegation

January 7, 2011Management, Team building, Time ManagementEdward Kiledjian

An important tenet of efficient and effective time management is the art of delegation. Anytime I talk about delegation with an executive, they either support it or avoid it like the plague. Their reaction is predicated on past experience.

When delegating a task, executives often forget the first golden rule of delegation: training and communication. In order for the work to be performed to your satisfaction, you need to ensure that you communicate your requirements and expectations to the other person clearly and concisely.

Taking some time upfront will save you tons of frustration and having to redo the work in the back end.

A ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

How to build a top performing team

December 8, 2010Team buildingEdward Kiledjian

As a manager, you will be judged on the performance of your team so it is in your best interest to build the best, highest performing team possible. You have undoubtedly heard the aphorism “Nice guys finish last” coined by Leo Durocher in 1939. This is a golden truth that you should recite every morning while enjoying your morning cup of coffee.

I had the privilege of working for a GE company under a CEO who had been indoctrinated in the Jack Welch system of management. A saying I heard over and over was “we are here to make money, not friends”. This approach may seem harsh at first but it has proven to be very efficient.

Let me spend some time describing how I interpreted this framework and my preferred method of implementing it.

What is corporate niceness
Corporate niceness means many things. This can be interpreted as:

employees not providing honest feedback
complacency related to efficiency
being more concerned with keeping people happy than being efficient and productive
sugarcoating everything to keep people happy
making sub-optimal decisions because you don’t want to upset people
conflict avoidance
etc.

I’m not sure if my sarcasm is coming through but it should....

Team Development
Bruce Tuckman defined the stages in group development as:

Forming -- This is the first stage where the team is assembled. Individuals have a desire to be accepted by others and thus try to avoid conflict. This is where people try to define roles and responsibilities, define team capabilities, team structure, etc. People may look busy but are not actually very productive yet.

Members are fairly autonomous and group efficiency does not exist yet. You will see your experienced and mature members starting to model desired behaviours already. Bruce recommends his “team development model” to be shared with the team as a catalyst.

In this stage, members are building their impression of each other and may start to build friendships.

Storming -- This is the normal second stage where ideas compete for consideration. This is where the real important decisions are made about leadership, independence and teamwork. You will start to see members challenging each other’s ideas.

The mature employees will be the ones that guide the team out of this stage and into the next one. Lacking strong mature employees or not having enough may mean your team gets stuck here forever (not what you want to happen).

Some members will handle this very well while other conflict averse ones will find it painful. As a manager, try to instill tolerance as a value and let this process take its natural course with your guidance. Stay professional and make sure people understand the buck stops with you. PERIOD. Let them manage their internal issues under your supervision.

Getting stuck in this phase means the team will be a low performer, with low motivation and overall toxic.

Norming -- This is the stage where the team has agreed on leadership, their general team goal and go-forward strategy. Understand that in order to have this united view, many other ideas have to die. Some people may not like the fact that their idea was not the “winner”. Overall though, the team now works towards the one goal.

Performing -- This is the stage few teams reach but this should be your goal. This is where you produce a high efficiency team that finds creative ways to reach the team goals. Members understand that they succeed together or they fail together. They are inter-dependant.

In this stage, the team operated without the need for supervision. They are each motivated and have the knowledge to perform their jobs with the utmost efficiency. The team will handle conflict internally very well.

Some managers can’t deal with this phase as the nature of their participation changes. They are no longer the master of the team but a value adding participant. The team is equipped to make important decisions on its own.

If your team has reached this point, do everything you can to keep it intact as-is. Even the slightest change in leadership can destabilize it and bring it back to the storming phase.

More Nice team bashing
Where do you think nice teams fit in? They like the comfortable non-confrontational stage of forming. They will do everything to prevent moving into the storming phase.

Now to avoid and break-up nice teams, you need to identify these pansies.

Remember that everything they do is meant to keep things positive. So if they provide feedback, it is only done when positive. Their lack of planning is camouflaged as staying focused on task.
They avoid conflict internally and with other teams so they are the proverbial yes-men. Saying yes all the time means you can’t prioritize. They avoid conflict at all cost even when it festers negative internal emotion.

My GE experience
To the external participant, our GE team seemed hostile, brutal, unfriendly and unworkable. But it wasn't. It was a finely tuned machine of utter productivity. Unlike the external view, we weren’t the anti-nice team. Some people found the push for absolute honesty too much but it made for a better team. The values we were all expected to share was personal performance, team performance and truthfulness.

The real anti-nice is an anti-employee culture that encourages individuality and constant conflict to “weed out the weak” and keep people on their toes. We were far from this. What made us different? The mindset.

First, we hired the best possible people who met our expected personality profiles. We wanted strong leaders who were confident in their abilities without being cocky or arrogant. We wanted people who were solid enough to accept and provide constructive feedback without getting offended.

They had to understand work-life balance. This meant they could intelligently say no and knew how much to accept before being put in an unworkable situation. These employees were happier, more motivate and much more creative. No one was “over-worked”.

They were prepared to accept accountability for their work and that of their colleagues. These were star performers who understood that the team made them stronger, more efficient and therefore helped them succeed.

These people were solid enough to accept constructive debate and were well-equipped to handle conflict. Conflict wasn't avoided or encouraged. It was just handled and then they moved on.

In a well oiled team, you will notice that different people play different vital roles. You will have people who specialize in conflict resolution, others will work as mentors or be detail-oriented and keep the team’s work in top shape. Some will bring huge amounts of energy and encouragement, others will take on the role of protecting the team from external threats, etc. Let each person find their role and let them thrive. These various specialties are what will make the team great.

Your job as a manager
So what is your role in all of this? Critical.

You are responsible for the selection of the right people and ejection of wrong hires quickly. Install values of patience, respect, honesty. See yourself more as a coach and mentor. If you find yourself doing too much “management stuff” then you probably need to revisit your team membership.

Clearly communicate that truthfulness and honesty are absolute requirements. No sugarcoating, no protecting, if there is an issue, raise it and find a solution.

Provide employee feedback. Your team should be mature so do it honestly, do it quickly (when in response to a situation), be open about your interpretation (do not criticize or judge until you have heard both sides of the story) and do it in private. Teams that don’t make mistakes are teams that don’t take chances. Teams that don’t take chances aren’t challenging the status quo enough. Accept mistakes and move on.

Manage conflict. If your team is mature, they will be able to handle conflict efficiently without needing escalation. Usually the team will coach junior members, but if that falls on your shoulders, here are some guidelines. Any conflict must be framed based on the purpose. What is the nature of the conflict and is it really worth it? Make sure the motives are clear and honest. Encourage people to respect one another and allow each person an appropriate amount of time to explain and speak. We are not children and they should not be boiling in their seat thinking of their comeback. Guide the conversation to ensure it stays factual and to the point. Explain that conflict or disagreements are normal and should not be taken personally. Help them find some common ground upon which they can build their agreement.

Remember that you too must adhere to this rule. Everything you expect of your team, they expect of you.

Empower your people to perform