I started out to create a platform that leaders / managers could use to adapt to their current circumstances by maximizing the talent they have available to them. However, given the gravity of the situation I thought a 12 step program that is designed to help you to align and engage the talent on your team and in your organization so that you capture as much discretionary effort from the talent in your organization as possible would get your attention. It is that extra effort channeled in alignment with your strategic plan that will separate you from your competition in this new economy.

Every 12 step program that I’m familiar with begins with the recognition and admission that we have a problem. The reality is that most organizations have been running lean since 2008. We’ve had to do more with less, talented people have not seen the advancement or pay increase opportunities they might have expected and many businesses continue to hold the line on their investment in people. Great 12 step programs start with a base line and build, or rebuild, from there. Have you established your base line yet? How aligned, engaged and committed to the strategic plan are the people in your organization, or on your team? When was the last time your organization measured the connection between the strategic plan and the talent you are counting on to execute that plan?

The art of aligning talent with the strategic plan for the business requires bi-lateral communication. The message from senior leadership must be a clear one that is well communicated to each and every individual contributor you are counting on to make the plan a reality. It is mission critical that any issues with the execution of the plan that arise are quickly communicated back to the senior leadership team to facilitate any required changes. A recent survey of 368 Canadian HR professionals found that leaders could improve engagement if they:

• Communicate clear expectations (71%)
• Listen to employee’s opinions (62%)
• Give recognition (52%)

Aligned teams and organizations are always composed of engaged employees. As leaders and managers the impact of our own honesty and integrity on engagement is incredible. That’s what allows us to build the trust needed to fully activate the spend of discretionary effort on the part of our direct reports. Those first two steps in the process are foundational elements that just can’t be ignored.

Self awareness is also a must if we are to lead effectively. How our words and actions are perceived by others determines how well we connect with the people we require to get the job done. Great leaders recognize that it is not a one size fits all world and adjust their messages accordingly to the audience. What works for you might not work for the people on your team. As their leader it is your job to determine what motivations and drives they need met to set them up for success in the role they are currently in.

Best-in-class organizations make sure that they hire and promote the right fit every time. These companies have seen and want to avoid the cost of a bad hire as well as the cost of the “Peter Principle”. There are two additional considerations to the standard resumé and interview process that determine fit. It has been well documented that behaviour is a critical factor in determining the level of success in a role. The second item is the cognitive ability of the candidate for hiring or promotion. When we are able to assess the behaviour required for the role (job matching), the behaviour of the candidates and their cognitive abilities our prospects for a successful hire or promotion go from the incredible low point of 14% all the way up to 75%.

Acceptance is our ability as a leader to recognize the strengths that each individual on our team possesses. If you are using behavioural and cognitive data to assist you in your hiring/promotion decisions you’ve got an incredible roadmap to the people on your team. It is this building block that allows great leaders to be able to multiply available talent. Knowing who is good at what and allowing them to focus on what they are good at makes your life as a leader far easier. Several of my clients use the format I’ve provided here to keep them focused on what’s important to their direct reports.

Goal setting sounds simple enough but might just be one of the most poorly executed strategies in many organizations. How can we expect people to buy in on the goal if we don’t allow them to participate in the creation? One report by Leadership IQ suggests that only 15% of employees believe that the goals their leadership has set for them will help them achieve results. There are a number of different formats we can use to establish goals from SWOT analysis to setting SMART goals. My suggestion is to pick what works for you and your team and work together to establish how their individual plans fit with the overall strategic plan.

The previous step is actually the start of the performance management process. Best-in-class organizations do not treat performance management as a once a year event. Great leaders have a process that is far more frequent, quite often informal, yet adds greatly to the level of engagement on their teams. More often than not the results of an engagement survey indicate that communication is an issue. People want to know how they are doing and once a year just doesn’t cut it.

By managing performance more frequently I don’t mean for you to micro manage the people on your team. You either hired or promoted them because you thought they were capable of performing in the role so let them do it…their way. Do that and you are sure to create a culture of accountability. This also requires that you accept responsibility along with them when things don’t work out. That goes right back to the foundational trust issue. Nothing stops innovation and accountability faster than either being “thrown under the bus” by your boss – or seeing you boss to that to another member of the team.

When we reward performance it is important that we recognize people in a way that is most natural for them. Money is not the primary motivator when you’ve engaged the people on your team. I will say that it is a case of different strokes for different folks. We see this time and again in those companies that use a behavioural assessment to help determine fit. They’ve got all of the data they need to manage recognition effectively.

It has been said that if you aren’t developing your successor the chances of you moving up the corporate ladder are slim. Succession planning will become even more crucial as the silver tsunami approaches. Best-in-class organizations are constantly monitoring their workforce for home-grown talent that can move into increasingly complex roles.

When an organization develops leadership capabilities at every level of the organization they create a robust talent pipeline. Statistics show that the chances of success for new hires in more senior roles dramatically increase when the talent comes from within the organization. This one strategy will positively impact your retention on a number of fronts. Bear in mind however that not everyone is interested in the climb up the corporate ladder.

The 12th step is service. In most organizations individual contributors make up 70 to 80% of the workforce. The frontline leaders in your organization that are responsible for directing this vast group will be the ones that largely determine how aligned and engaged your workforce is. This service mentality starts at the top of the organization and cascades throughout. The goal for your organization is to align, engage and perform. To do that effectively you have to give the same level of great service you would deliver to your clients…to your direct reports.

That’s not always an easy thing to do especially if you are behaviourally hardwired to problem solve and direct traffic. When your people come to you with an issue are you naturally inclined to provide them with the answers or do you take the time to ask questions and allow them to self discover? There is no doubt that the first course of action will allow you to solve more problems over the course of any given day. The challenge for you is that you will continue to be the go to problem solver since your direct reports aren’t able to develop the skills required to do it for themselves.

In their book Multipliers Liz Wiseman & Greg Mckeown make a great case for leveraging the intelligence and capabilities of the people around them. “Multipliers are leaders who look beyond their own genius and focus their energy on extracting and extending the genius of others.” These are not “feel good” leaders. “They are tough and exacting managers who see a lot of capacity in others and want to utilize that potential to the fullest.” They listen more and tell less.

In the work I do with my clients we use a behavioural assessment to determine the drives and motivators of the people within the organization. More often than not the people in leadership roles are competetive, impatient for results and action oriented. Their level of patience makes it more difficult for them to be good listeners and their level of dominance often creates the need to just go ahead and solve the problem themselves.

The great managers that I’ve met have developed a solid sense of self-awareness and have come to the realization that they are not able to do it alone. They have learned that smart people are everywhere and will figure things out and get even smarter in the process. For them to experience success as leaders their primary function is to ask the right questions.

Would you approach your job differently if you believed that the people on your team are smart and can figure out what needs to be done? With a Multiplier mindset people will surprise you. They will give you more of their discretionary spend of effort and as a result deliver better, more consistent outcomes.

Challenge yourself to ask questions rather than provide answers in your next team meeting or one on one meeting with a direct report. One of the best I’ve heard for initiating dialogue in a one on one meeting is “tell me something you think I don’t know”. Throw your team meeting open to the group. If you’re asked a question lay the opportunity out on the table by saying something to the effect of “how would you guys handle that?”.

Great investigative questions are the spark to leveraging the intelligence, creativity and capacity that exists on your current team of direct reports. Take away the burden of needing to have all of the answers yourself by engaging your team in the process of discovery. Some of the best investigative style of “questions” start as statements as follows:

• Help me understand…
• Share with me…
• Tell me about…
• Describe…
• Explain…

Having asked the question is one thing, sitting back and listening to the responses is another. This process requires restraint on your part. Remember that it doesn’t matter if you are the smartest person in the room. Your role as a leader is to make everyone around you smarter and leverage their combined capacity. There is a big difference between you personally achieving a 10% uplift in productivity vs. everyone on your team each achieving that same 10% improvement. Multipliers are able to get more out of limited resources.

My leadership challenge to you is to begin by asking just one question at your next meeting. Allowing your direct reports to contribute will set you on the path to becoming a multiplier within your organization. It will set them on the path to engagement and far better alignment with the strategy that you’ve been asked to implement.

While the strategic plan may be established by the senior leadership team the execution of that plan is very much a bottom up exercise. How well the frontline individual contributors in your organization understand and execute on the strategic plan will determine the overall level of success. That puts pressure on your leadership team to not only effectively communicate the message from senior leadership to the “feet in the street” but to provide active and ongoing feedback from their direct reports to senior leadership.

When that feedback includes the element of intuition or interpretation on the part of frontline leadership the degree of misalignment can be significant from one team or business unit to another. The problem for senior leadership is to get a fix on where all of the moving parts within the organization are with respect to the strategic vision they have created.

If you want to find out where you stand you have to be prepared to ask some tough questions of everyone within the organization. Relying on the interpretation or “gut” response of your frontline leaders will provide you with as many different opinions as you have leaders. The trick is to ask the same questions of everyone and provide the level of anonymity that will spark frankness in the responses. A survey engine that contains correlation analysis, automated reports, cross tab analysis, alignment measures by workgroup, performance variation and gap analytics is the means to that end.

An intelligent diagnostics platform should be customizable and designed to allow you to capture the data that is pertinent to your organization. There is no use comparing the performance of your company to the metrics being driven in another company. If your frontline individual contributors are not able to articulate and deliver on your strategic plan you need to find out sooner rather than later. This is the difference between leading and lagging indicators of performance.

George Labovitz in his book The Power Of Alignment puts it this way, “Misaligned companies, like cars out of alignment, can develop serious problems if not corrected quickly. They are hard to steer and don’t respond well to changes in direction.” Alignment gives managers at every level of the organization the ability to:

• Rapidly deploy a coherent business strategy
• Be totally customer focused
• Develop best in class people
• Continuously improve business processes

All at the same time!

According to Jeffrey Pfeffer (Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Stanford University)  power can make leaders “disinhibited”. Once they’ve arrived in power leaders often believe that the rules don’t apply to them anymore. They stop taking into account the feelings, needs and point of view of other people. They stop thinking about the fact that power is a relationship. It’s a relationship between them and someone else and in order to have an effective relationship you have to consider where the other person is coming from and what their needs and requirements are.

In the Office Team survey most (59%) stayed in their jobs and either tried to address the situation or resolved to live with it. The impact that this added stress creates is never positive for the organization or the people forced to put up with bad behaviour on the part of their direct supervisor. Consider that organizations with higher levels of staff engagement and alignment out perform their competition by every metric measured and there is a great business case for providing the necessary coaching/training that would correct the issue at the source.

In the meanwhile if you or someone you know has made the decision to live with a bad boss here are some tips for survival.

• Can you get out of the situation? Don’t quit unless you can survive 3 to 5 months without a paycheque.
• Start job hunting. It’s easier to tolerate bad behaviour on a temporary basis.
• Fight the situation but don’t do it alone. It is much more compelling if your coworkers are in the fight with you.

I recall driving north on Highway 69 heading to a cottage on the French River in the fall of 1980. Traffic was backed up for miles and this incredible sense of frustration was washing over me. As we finally approached the front of the line I realized that we were witnessing history. We stumbled across the Terry Fox Marathon of Hope. To this day I can still picture Terry in my rear view mirror running down that highway and I feel the same emotional impact.

I am one of those lucky people that regularly have inspiration in their sightlines and that’s the story I wanted to share. My 85 year old uncle, Stan Edgerton, is one of those amazing people that have the capacity to elevate and stimulate those around him by his actions as well as his character. He has always led by example and been unbelievably supportive of the people in his life.

Stan joined the Toronto Scottish Regiment at the age of 15 and served with distinction during World War II. Consider what you were doing at age 15 and then stop to realize that he lost his two older brothers during the invasions of France and Italy. Our uncle Stan was the Canadian equivalent of the story told in “Saving Private Ryan”. He came home to a widowed mother and a younger sister. My mother, Stan’s sister, held him in such high esteem that the feelings of faith, confidence and trust that she had in the man were palpable she spoke about him.

A gifted athlete Stan represented Canada at the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland, New Zealand in the pole vault winning a silver medal. My mother held onto the newspaper clipping that included a story about Stan until her death. That was no small feat when you consider that she and my father moved 39 times in just over 25 years. The story described the voracious appetite that Stan and the rest of the Canadian team had brought to New Zealand with them. The article included a picture of Stan in his Canadian uniform.

Through the years he participated in Masters Track and Field events and took home is fair share of medals. The family wasn’t the least bit surprised when Stan announced at age 82 that he wanted to try to set a new world record for the pole vault at the USA Masters Outdoor Track and Field Championships. The training timeline was a short one for Stan and while he won gold at the event he came up short on his goal of setting a new record. The first thing he did on his return home was to put tape across the end wall in his garage so he could visualize the height he needed to clear to get the record next year.

It’s that optimism and dogged determination that inspires me to be better at what I do. It’s his character that causes me to want to be a better person. I guess I’ve known the same thing my mother always did. The world is a better place because of Stan Edgerton and we are far better off for having had the privilege of being close enough to him to be inspired by such a great man. As you go about your day stop to think about who has inspired you, and who you might be inspiring by your words and actions.

In my career, while the great managers I worked with stand out and are memorable, they are vastly out-numbered by the group that didn’t “get” their people. The latter group often gave no indication that they cared about the people they managed. We were numbers on a grid and each of us was responsible for creating some output that would ultimately drive revenue. Their unwavering focus on the results we all generated left us wondering how it all mattered in the big scheme. The joie de vivre that drives most teams to high performance was missing completely.

Authors Daniel Pink, Buckingham and Coffman, Charan, Drotter and Noel, have all suggested that to get the most out of the talent we have on our teams, leaders/managers need to develop their own skills at managing performance. The leadership pipelines in many organizations have become clogged by the ineffective group I referred to earlier. Performance management is so much more than an annual (or semi-annual) review system. Done correctly you not only get the results that you need to fulfill your corporate objectives you aid in the development of everyone on your team and impact succession planning within the organization.

When was the last time you had a meaningful conversation with each member of your team about something other than the results this week, this month or this quarter? Have you talked about their personal development and what they have done to move that plan forward in the past 3 months? How about the last time you delivered feedback to a member of your team that let them know how much you personally appreciated their efforts not only in hitting targets but in taking the time and making the effort to create purpose in what you do?

Most of us love constructive feedback. Every one of us loves praise as long as it is delivered in a way that fits with our behavioural makeup and yet as leaders we neglect to tend to the specific needs of the individual contributors that make or break us. By that I mean don’t publicly praise a private person, make sure that you offer up some concrete and specific details to the person on your team that is a more formal, “by the book” individual. Know the people on your team that are turned on by contributing to the good of the team. This isn’t a one size fits all solution and what works for you might not work for everyone else on your team. That is unless you’ve done the unthinkable and hired an entire team of people just like you.

The biggest source of misalignment within organizations is created by the disconnect that exists between the individual contributors that create results and the group that manages their performance. All too often their manager feels the need to restrict autonomy by determining what the right steps are to success for the members of his or her team. When the focus shifts to tracking each step that you prescribed to success it becomes next to impossible for the member of your team to celebrate their own individual successes.

Your role as the leader of a team of individual contributors is not an easy one to be sure. For the organization to be successful your single greatest objective has to be in aligning the output of the individual members of your team with the strategic vision created by the senior leadership team. As the former leader of Netscape, Jim Barksdale used to say, “The main thing is to keep your main thing the main thing”. If I went to any member of your current team and asked them to talk to me about the strategic vision that your organization has would they be able to articulate it for me? Creating that sense of purpose that Pink refers to in his book Drive occurs when you tie individual results back to the overriding reason your organization is in business. You are the conduit between the senior leadership team and the feet in the street. It’s the weekly conversations that you have with your direct reports that form the intelligence that senior leadership needs to ensure that their vision is being received and understood and acted upon.

For you to be successful in your role it is important that your tactical efforts go beyond the routine of tracking progress to the objectives you’ve established with your direct reports. This myopic view of the world does nothing to engender Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose as Daniel Pink describes in Drive nor does it lead to the successful outcomes that Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman outlined in First Break All The Rules. Your focus has to be on how you can leverage the individual strengths of every member of your team to advance “The Main Thing” for your organization. The best way that you can do that is to incorporate “The Main Thing” into the conversations that you have with the people that are part of your team. Tell them what they’ve done for you lately and how much you appreciate the fact that their efforts tie so nicely back to the reason for being that is your organization.

Your role, should you choose to accept it, is to tie the tactical, day to day business outcomes you manage back to the strategic vision for your organization. George Labovitz, the author of The Power of Alignment, will tell you that “organizations that are aligned outperform organizations that are misaligned by every metric measured”.

Pink has done some ground breaking work in identifying the true drivers of better performance in the workplace. It turns out that for simple, straight forward tasks the carrot and the stick work well as motivators. For roles that require algorithmic performance, the concept of “if you do this, then you get that” works as a performance motivator. However, if the task gets more complicated - when it requires some conceptual, creative thinking - those kinds of motivators don’t work. We’ve known for years that money is not the primary motivator of successful business outcomes. Science has shown us that performance, and personal satisfaction, come down to 3 factors:

1. Autonomy
2. Mastery
3. Purpose

Autonomy is our desire to be self-directed, to run our own lives. This is where traditional management methods actually get in the way of performance. In their book “First Break All The Rules” Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman identified the differences between what great managers do and what conventional wisdom dictates. Their findings indicated that without fail the managers that concentrated on following had significantly better results than their contemporaries:

• Selecting for talent.
•  Set expectations by defining the right outcomes.
• Motivate by focusing on an individual’s strengths.
• Develop the people on their team by helping them find the right fit within the organization.

Defining the right outcomes and focusing on the individual strengths of the members of your team will have a dramatic effect on the sense of autonomy that you engender. Traditional management focuses on setting expectations by defining the right steps for your direct reports. Regardless of what your leadership role is within the organization (leader of others vs. leader of leaders) when you establish what the target or goal is with one of your direct reports and allow them to determine the right steps to success are you provide them with the autonomy that drives both personal satisfaction and improved performance.

The shift from being an individual contributor within the organization to being a leader of others is a difficult one to make. Most of us that have made that transition didn’t get much in the way of training for our new role. We know what has worked well for us in the past and when it comes to crunch time we reach back to those experiences and apply them with our direct reports. Unfortunately much of what we did as an individual contributor has a negative impact when it comes to managing for results with others.

There are some simple steps you can take to ensure that you cultivate a true sense of autonomy with your direct reports. It is important to remember that autonomy and accountability go hand in hand. Allowing your direct reports to determine what the right steps are doesn’t mean that you will be abdicating your responsibility as a manager to ensure that targets are met and successful business outcomes are delivered. It is imperative to the success of your direct reports that you have frequent check-in conversations and that you both monitor the progress to the end result. That doesn’t mean that you should look for a status update every time you talk with the person. Establish a schedule of follow-up meetings and stick with the schedule.

It’s been said that good people don’t leave the organization they work for, they leave due to a misalignment with their manager. That’s often driven by the fact that their manager has been determined to motivate them by identifying and overcoming what s/he perceives to be their weaknesses. The fact is that people don’t change that much. As a manager you are wasting your time trying to put in what you feel was left out. Focus instead on the individual strengths and try to draw out more of what was left in.

Strength based coaching plays directly to mastery. Each of us would like to get better at what we do. I don’t believe that anyone I’ve ever managed got up in the morning and started the day thinking about how they wanted to go to work and do the worst possible job they could. It was only when I began to understand behaviour that I could see how my actions were impacting both the personal satisfaction and individual performance of my direct reports. Once I was able to apply the science of behaviour and truly understand what the motivational drives and needs were for the various people I began to see the shift from compliance to commitment.

I’m not going to say that this is easy. For many of us in leadership roles one of our strengths is the ability to quickly and creatively problem solve… individually. When someone asks us a question we give them an answer. Unfortunately that response does little to create the feeling of autonomy within our direct reports. Self-discovery is another important piece of the puzzle for both autonomy and mastery. The next time a member of your team asks you a question directly related to a specific target or goal take a deep breath and before you answer them ask them to share what they would do if they were solely responsible. Just one question and then give them the time to respond. Clarify if need be but let them respond. That should be the start of a great conversation between you in which they actually find the answer themselves.

It truly is your choice to make. I can speak from experience on both sides of the issue and I have to say that I much preferred commitment from my direct reports. Your role as a leader of a group of individual contributors puts you in the driver’s seat when it comes to the level of engagement within your organization. In most cases this group of managers is directly responsible for the business outcomes of 70% to 80% of the workforce. Give them autonomy, mastery and purpose and watch them shine. Have great conversations and focus on developing their strengths. That’s the way to improve performance.

Recent data suggests that job satisfaction is at its lowest level in two decades. In fact, 22% of employees do not expect to be at their current jobs a year from now. The threat of losing high potential or mission critical employees is an issue that company’s need to be actively addressing. “Research indicates that as soon as consumer confidence recovers, quit rates begin to rise”, notes PI Worldwide^® Director Research Dr. Todd Harris.

The story my friend shared with me will become all too familiar. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman outlined what the world’s greatest managers do differently in their book First, Break All The Rules. They show that conventional wisdom dictates that front line managers do the following:
1. Select a person…based on experience, intelligence and determination
2. Set expectations…by defining the right steps
3. Motivate the person…by helping them identify and overcome weaknesses
4. Develop the person…by helping them learn and get promoted

Great managers on the other hand focus on the following:
1. When selecting someone…they select for talent
2. When setting expectations…they define the right outcomes
3. When motivating someone…the focus on strengths
4. When developing someone…they help them find the right fit

The truth is that there are far too many front line managers that lack the training, self awareness and skill set to function at the level of the great managers that Buckingham and Coffman identified. That’s not to say that it is a lost cause or even too late for this underperforming group. In the work I do with my clients we use the Predictive Index^® to help managers understand their own management and leadership style and how that impacts the entire organization. I’ve seen my share of “aha” moments as a front line comes to grips with how his or her behaviour drives the interactions with direct reports.

For all of us that have moved from the realm of individual contributor to become a manager of others one of the hardest lessons learned is the fact that we can’t control the people on our team…no matter how hard we might try. Nor can we do it all ourselves as another contributor on the team. If we understand the talent we have on our team, define the right outcomes and harness the strengths of the people we manage we create accelerated results. Helping our people find the right fit in their next developmental role is a discussion that will flow naturally from our collective accomplishments.

Understanding the talent on your team is a lot easier when you use a management process like the Predictive Index^®. One manager I work with summed it up by saying “As a manager working with an unfamiliar group of people I feel that PI was invaluable in helping me to assess the strengths of the team I now lead. More importantly it pointed out some gaps that existed and allowed me to address them far more quickly than I have been able to at any point in my career. There is no question that this has made me a more effective leader. Results speak volumes and with the ability to provide solid coaching that was geared to individual behavuours we have exceed our annual targets for 8 consecutive quarters during a significant economic downturn selling software solutions to the banking industry in Canada…talk about a challenge.”

Back to the manager in the organization my friend is part of. As we talked it became clear that the only focus for this manager was himself. Apparently he was a “great” delegator. The only problem was that he would talk all of the credit for the work his team had done. Due to the focus on his own career development this manager was also far better at managing up than he was with either his direct reports or peer to peer.

Based on the data that Dr. Harris has compiled we understand that behaviour can impact workplace performance by as much as 25%. Imagine what the outcome might have been had this manager been able to incorporate behaviour into the interactions he had with each member of the team. Would his organization be looking to find replacements for the five people they lost in what is now a much more competitive talent acquisition market?

Putting the right tools in the hands of your front line managers is critical to the bottom line success of the organization. Providing them with a solution to understand their own behaviour as well as every member of their team gives them the opportunity to function at the same level as those great managers that Buckingham and Coffman studied.

Hire for Talent
How often do we bring people onboard based on the strengths of their experience (resume), how well they did in the interview, and their appearance only to fire them because of their behaviour? Great managers understand what is required for the role and look to find the best fit…for the role, for their team and for the organization.

Define the Right Outcomes
Depending on the behavioural makeup of your team some members may require more input/data and others will love it if you just allow them how to get from point A to point B. Understand their behaviour and you have a roadmap to what each person needs to feel valued.

Focus on Strengths
Sure you know what the individual strengths are from a tactical work output perspective. We’re talking about the 25% chunk (behaviour) that can ramp your teams performance up to levels you never thought possible. Who on your team likes a challenge? Who is risk averse or worries about change? What is their learning style? How about communication? Do they like to be publicly recognized or prefer to have you do that in private?

Tune into all of this and you teams go from good to great. Your managers become more like the manager at the software company I work with. People are fighting to get onto his team. He is acknowledged within his organization as a developer of people. Get your managers to that level and take a look at the bottom line. You won’t believe it’s the same organization.

Maybe it’s independence and the ability to control their own activities?

How about money or symbols of prestige and status?

Could it be certainty – understanding exactly what the rules are?

The fact of the matter is that it’s all of these and more. There isn’t a one size fits all solution to this age old question. Leaders, managers and coaches that understand this basic principle invariably stand out from the rest of the pack. The true question is…What does it take to motivate each member of your team individually?

 I’ve heard it said that we can’t motivate someone else. The concept is that people have to do that for themselves. Truth be told this one is way off the mark. Virtually everything we do as leaders or managers impacts the motivation and performance of our teams. Understanding how to capture the discretionary spend of effort that is tied to motivation (and morale) is critical to your success in this age of having to do more with less.

An obvious starting point is your own self awareness. Your own behaviour will dictate your preferred style of:

• Communicating
• Managing vs. Leading
• Solving problems
• Processing information
• Making decisions
• Taking action
• Approaching risk
• Delegating

Handling each of these functions in a way that best fits with the behavioural temperaments of the people on your team will determine the measure of success you have in motivating them.

The work that I do with my clients includes creating self awareness and understanding how they can make the critical connections in their lives become more focused and effective. I happen to use a behavioural assessment called the Predictive Index^TM to help them better manage the relationships they have with the people on their team, peers and in a subordinate role. Creating this roadmap of behaviour allows them to navigate the twists and turns they experience in today’s relationship driven corporate culture.

Once we understand an individual’s behavioural drives we can develop a motivational plan that will categorically drive the outcomes that you are looking for. A classic example of missing a motivational opportunity plays out in most organizations time and time again. We have a manager that is an extroverted, outgoing, engaging person that loves to be recognized for his or her accomplishments in front of the entire company. What do they do to motivate a job well done on their team? Give that public recognition of course! What happens if the person that’s being “motivated” is more introspective, quiet and analytical? Certainly not what the manager was hoping for. It sets the stage for poor performance if good performance means being centered out in front of the world.

What does it take to motivate your team? My experience has shown that a manager that is self aware and able to bring a team of individuals together by playing to each of their strengths will have the most success. Knowing how to do that is easy once you add science to your own intuition. If your organization uses a behavioural assessment during to recruit and select new hires you are ahead of the curve. Tap into that data that you’ve already captured to unleash the true potential of the people on your team.

If you haven’t used a behavioural assessment there are plenty out there. I’m familiar with and comfortable with the Predictive Index^TM. My clients are amazed at the depth and richness of information that they have to work with based on a typical investment of time that is less than 10 minutes. Do yourself a favour and check out www.PIworldwide.com if you reside in the US or www.predictivesuccess.com if you’re in Canada.

• In average organizations, the ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is 1.5 to 1.
  
• World-class organizations have an engagement ratio near 8 to 1.
  
• The estimated cost of disengagement in the US is more than $300 billion in lost productivity alone.
  

Their studies have reflected that the potential for disengagement is closely tied to the way that a manager interacts with his/her team. This certainly lends credence to the belief held by many that people don’t leave organizations they leave managers. From the work Gallup completed in 2005 we are presented with a solid understanding of the impact that a manager’s style will have on the team that they lead.

Clearly developing an understanding of the strengths of every member of your team will deliver a competitive edge and serve you well as we make our way out of this recession. That’s going to mean that you will likely have to tailor your approach and your message to the various personalities that you’ve got reporting to you. The one exception would be that you have hired a team that are behavioural clones of you.

Let’s take a look at the Predictive Index® profile of a fictitious member of your team to demonstrate how you can manage to behavioural strengths and maximize engagement.

I’ve been using the Predictive Index® for years to help me better understand, motivate and develop the people on my teams. A study conducted by the management consulting firm PI Worldwide in 2007 determined that behaviour accounts for as much as 25% of workplace performance. If you were just able to plug into the drives, motivators and, most importantly, the needs of the various people working with you, and focus on their strengths, not only would you see a dramatic increase in their level of engagement you would experience a performance spike in the process. 

“Dan”, our fictitious character,  is probably the most adept person we have on our team at building and leveraging relationships. He interested in people, building relationships and teamwork rather than technical matters. Dan is focused on the goals and people he needs to get there not details or plans, in fact he frequently delegates details. His work pace is faster than average and he prefers to think “big picture”. Strongly persuasive, he has complete confidence in his ability to gain others trust and buy in. He’s persistent and won’t take no for an answer.

If we choose to focus our development efforts on correcting Dan’s weaknesses and depending on our own behavioural traits what we might see in Dan is someone who exhibits the following;

• He’s way too social, spends too much time talking with the others in the office to the point of distracting them from their work.
  
• He can’t provide me with enough detail. A plan for him is something that can be sketched out on a napkin and I need to understand the specifics of how we are going to get there.
  
• I know he can do his work as well as anyone else on the team but I get the feeling that he’s lazy. I always have to prod him to get things done.
  

The big question here is what does Dan need from his manager to maximize his effectiveness, productivity and job satisfaction? If we can answer that question we’ve got a fully engaged employee that will give us the discretionary effort that we are looking to capture. The tough part for you might be altering your style so the message you deliver to Dan is one that is consistent and resonates with him.

We know that Dan is fundamentally a very social being. He draws energy from talking and working with others and can be a really strong collaborator. Rather than getting up from your desk to break up the huddles Dan has over the course of the day you would be better served to create opportunities for him to help other members of the team. By providing Dan with the opportunity to be involved in a variety of activities and to communicate the message you want you focus on his strengths.

Dan sees the big picture and trying to get him to drill down into detail is a strategy that will only frustrate both of you. Keep him focused on the big picture goals he has for himself and you have for the team and he will be far more productive. Giving him recognition for work that is done right in a social setting will add status for him in the eyes of his co-workers and that’s a strong motivator for Dan.

The final piece of advice for you as his manager is that Dan isn’t lazy. He’s just not a self starter like some of the people on your team might be. Your role as his manager is to find ways to get him excited about what he’s working on. Because he likes variety and pace in his day you may see him as being scattered or unfocused because he doesn’t like to work on one thing until it’s done. Use that need for variety and his strong social style and get him to help out on several projects within the team. He will love you for it and you will capture so much more of his energy by allowing him to take advantage of his natural behavioural strengths.

Bob Woodcock has been helping organizations to maximize the contributions of their employees using the Predictive Index®. For morinformation on how to improve the level of engagement and performance on your team feel free to contact him at bobw@predictivesuccess.com or go to his website at www.bobwoodcock.com.