Manager as Coach: You Can Close the Satisfaction Gap
By Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans
Here is yet another mandate from your senior leaders. In addition to producing more with less, you’re now supposed to be a coach to your talented, hard-to-replace employees. (read more...)

Adding Value—But at What Cost?
By Marshall Goldsmith
In my experience, one of the most common challenges that successful people face is a constant need to win. When the issue is important, they want to win. When the issue is trivial, they want to win. Even when the issue isn't worth the effort or is clearly to their disadvantage, they still want to win. (read more...)

Apply Recognition to Training & Development
By Bob Nelson
The principle of recognition that "You get what you reward" is a universal yet often underutilized principle in day-to-day management, and the training and development function is no exception. (read more...)

Manager as Coach: You Can Close the Satisfaction Gap (^ top)
By Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans

Here is yet another mandate from your senior leaders. In addition to producing more with less, you’re now supposed to be a coach to your talented, hard-to-replace employees. You’re expected to develop, engage and retain them. Easier said than done.

You’ve been armed with lists of mission critical competencies and accompanying developmental remedies. Your stars have been 360-degree-feedbacked to death. You know what to focus on with them now. Or do you?

While you’re busy trying to close competency gaps, some of your best people are thinking about jumping ship, throwing in the towel, opening a yogurt stand. They know there must be greener grass—out there—somewhere.

What is wrong?

Is It a Competency Gap or a Satisfaction Gap?
When we ask your talented employees (in focus groups, surveys, or coaching sessions), “How thrilled are you with your work? What’s great about it? What’s missing?” The answers include, “I love my work except for:

• the pressure—to produce, conform, innovate.”
• the jerk I work with (or report to).”
• the lack of time for family, health, fun.”
• the boredom, repetition, lack of challenge.”

The answers are as diverse as the people. But there’s a commonality too. In every case there is either something wrong or something missing. If you hope to engage and retain your key people, it’s not enough to search for and close competency gaps. You’ll need to dive in, diagnose and work to close the satisfaction gaps as well.

Define Satisfaction
One employee wants autonomy and another craves recognition. Others want a promotion or work/life balance. What thrills us at work is as unique to each of us as our fingerprints. Spend time with your employees to clearly define what rings their chimes. Ask them to rate those desired work parameters on a 1-5 importance scale. Drill down to the detail and push for a lengthy list. These questions might help you:

• What about your job makes you jump out of bed in the morning?
• If you were to win the lottery and resign, what would you miss the most?
• If you could go back to a job or organization in your past and stay for an extended period of time, which one would it be and why?
• Which of your job tasks would you like to do more of?

The answers to these questions will help your employees identify those aspects of work that matter most to them. And their answers will also help you match their needs to the opportunities in your workplace.

Rate the Work
Once the satisfiers are delineated, ask your employee to rate the current work and workplace against each of those parameters. To what degree does this work meet the desired parameter? How does it fall short?

Analyze the Gaps
If your talented employee wants a new challenge and has been stuck in a redundant, repetitive job for months, the gap is apparent. It’s not always that obvious though. You’ll need to engage in real conversation to help your employees get very clear about the gaps.

Close the Gaps
Once you’ve identified the satisfaction gaps with your employees, you’re armed and dangerous. Team with them to create dozens of possible solutions (sometimes work-arounds) to their dilemmas. Test-drive a few. See what works and what doesn’t. Then try another.

Note: The above steps depend on a trusting relationship between you and your employees. If you have that—great. If you don’t—build it—now!

It sounds so simple and of course it’s not. We humans are complex and successful managing is, as we know, part art and part science. Sometimes your most talented people must move on to be satisfied and successful. Often, though, they don’t. They can get exactly what they want, right where they are. And you can help them do that.

Adding Value—But at What Cost? (^ top)
By Marshall Goldsmith

From FastCompany: Issue 73, Page 58

The two men at dinner were clearly on the same wavelength. One of them was my friend Jon Katzenbach, the former McKinsey & Co. director who now heads his own elite consulting boutique. The other was Niko Canner, his brilliant partner. They were planning a new venture. But something about their conversation was slightly off. When Niko floated ideas, Jon tended to interrupt him. "That's a great idea," Jon would say, "but it might work better if you . . ." and then he would share a different way to tackle the issue. When he finished, Niko would pick up where he left off, only to be interrupted by Jon again. Back and forth it went, like a long rally at Wimbledon.

As the third party at the table, I watched and listened. I do this for a living as an executive coach. I help smart, successful people identify interpersonal challenges that they can improve -- and then coach them to get better. I'm used to monitoring people's dialogues, listening for clues that reveal why even the most accomplished people may sometimes annoy their bosses, peers, and subordinates.

Ordinarily, I keep quiet, but Jon was exhibiting classic smart-person behavior. When Niko left the table, I laughed and said, "Jon, perhaps you should just go with Niko's ideas. Stop trying to add so much value to the discussion."

In my experience, one of the most common challenges that successful people face is a constant need to win. When the issue is important, they want to win. When the issue is trivial, they want to win. Even when the issue isn't worth the effort or is clearly to their disadvantage, they still want to win.

Research shows that the more we achieve, the more we tend to want to "be right." At work meetings, we want our position to prevail. In arguments, we pull out all the stops to come out on top. Even at supermarket checkouts, we scout other lines to see if there's one that's moving faster.

In Jon's case, he was displaying a variation on the need to win: adding too much value. It's particularly common among smart people. They may retain remnants of a top-down management style even if they don't want to. These leaders are smart enough to realize that most of their subordinates know more in specific areas than they ever will, but old habits die hard. It's difficult for them to listen to others disclose information without communicating either that they already knew about it or that they know a better way.

The problem is, while they may have improved the idea by 5%, they've reduced the employee's commitment to executing it by 30%, because they've taken away that person's ownership of the idea. Therein lies the fallacy of added value: Whatever is gained in the form of a better idea may be lost six times over in the employee's diminished enthusiasm for the concept. One of my top clients said, "Unfortunately, at the CEO level, my suggestions get taken as orders, even if I don't want them to."
Later on, Jon and I had a laugh over the dinner incident. As one of the world's leading authorities on building teams and instilling pride, he knew the right answer. He was amazed at how often he had said "but." That's how pernicious the need to win can be. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that leaders should zip their lips to keep their staff's spirits from sagging. But the higher up you go in an organization, the more you need to let other people be winners and not make it about winning yourself.

For bosses, that means being careful about how you hand out encouragement. If you find yourself saying, "Great idea, but . . ." try cutting your response off at "idea." Even better, take a breath before you speak, and ask yourself if what you're about to say is worthwhile. One of my clients said that once he got into that habit, he realized that at least half of what he was going to say wasn't worth saying.

As for employees, be confident about your expertise. Stand up for what you believe in! Years ago, an experienced chocolate maker agreed to produce a sampler box of 12 chocolates for the late clothing designer Bill Blass. The chocolatiers designed a dozen different chocolates for Blass's approval, but sensing that he would resent not having a choice, they seeded the selection with several intentionally inferior pieces. To their horror, Blass liked the inferior chocolates. Blass was a man of great taste in clothes—not candy. After he left the room, the chocolatiers said to one another, "What are we going to do?" Finally, the head of the company, a family business that had thrived for seven generations, decided, "We know chocolate. He doesn't. Let's make the ones we like."

Sweet.

Marshall Goldsmith (Marshall@MarshallGoldsmith.com) is corporate America's preeminent executive coach and a founder of Marshall Goldsmith Partners.

Apply Recognition to Training & Development (^ top)
By Bob Nelson

The principle of recognition that "You get what you reward" is a universal yet often underutilized principle in day-to-day management, and the training and development function is no exception. There are lots of ways that recognition can be used to make the training function more efficient, learning more effective and the training staff more appreciated. To get the most out of the training investment that's made in your organization, consider the following:

Before Training. I believe that the most effective training pulls an attendee's job, with its challenges, opportunities and applications, into the classroom as much as possible. Why are employees sent to a specific training session? What are they suppose to gain from the experience? How will this help them in their job? What questions do they have prior to the program that they would like to get answered in the training? Talking with employees ahead of time answers these questions and is, itself, a form of recognition for most employees: it provides dedicated time and attention with the most important person in any employee's job—their manager—that is focused on the employee's learning and development, involving them in the goal-setting process for the training activity.

During Training. Recognition can be a powerful tool within the classroom as well. The more the training environment can be a positive, nurturing experience, the more—and faster—attendees are apt to learn. From complimenting a question that is asked to thanking a volunteer who has offered to share a perspective, recognition is fundamental for helping to get trainees to lower their defenses and risk participating and learning something new.

After Training. The more the learnings from the training can be discussed, shared, practiced, and reinforced on the job, the greater the chance that a transfer of learning will take place. Each attendee should have a post-training meeting with his or her manager to discuss how the training went, determine f the employee got all their questions answered, and identify ways the training will be implemented in the person's job. After training, the manager should also look for ways to notice and thank the employee as that person uses learnings from the training.

The training & development staff. It is important to remember that recognition can and should also be used to build the morale and pride of the training staff as they make progress toward departmental goals.

Don't forget to recognize and thank those managers that support individual learning and development among their staff, the training department, and the ongoing value of learning and development in your organization. Make them role models that other managers can emulate to help make the overall organization more successful.

*********************************************
JobDig provides eTreat every week as a free service to you.
Click here if you wish to unsubscribe. If you have comments or suggestions, please email: editor@jobdig.com

_______________

JobDig columnists: (click for bio)
- Richard Bolles
- Marshall Goldsmith
- Nick Corcodilos
- Bev Kaye
- Richard Leider
- Bob Nelson
_______________

Click here to experience the magic of JobDig's virtual online ePapers