THE 6:8 LEADER GROUP
Act Justly | Love Mercy | Walk Humbly

Four Things You Must Get Right

Close up of men's rowing teamPat MacMillan in his book “The Performance Factor” lays out four skills needed to lead any team.  If you don’t get these right, nothing else really matters.

1. Picking Good People

You work with people the way they are, not the way you wish they were.  So you can bet, if they don’t fit now they won’t fit later.  Building a team takes time, so build in a lot of time into getting the best person fit you can.  Before you start the hiring process, know what you are looking for.  Look at past performance—it is the best predictor of future performance.

2. Setting Clear Expectations

It has been said that less than one-half of all workers claim to know what is expected of them.  ASK: “What do you think you get paid to do?”  And ask it often.

3. Recognizing Excellence and Praising It

Aubrey Daniels in “Bringing Out the Best in People” says every behavior has a consequence.  Some are good and some are bad.  We need to manage consequences.  The following maxim has been attributed to many famous people, “What gets rewarded is what gets done.”  Regardless of it’s origin, most of us know it as the Greatest Management Principle in the World and the number one reason why consequences must be managed.

4. Showing Care for Your People

Research shows that employees who feel cared about are less likely to have accidents, steal, miss work, quit, etc.  Don’t fake caring.  If you don’t care, go someplace where you can.

“The most effective way to invest your time is to identify exactly how each [team member] is different and then, as in chess, figure out how you can best incorporate these differences into your overall plan of action.”  (Marcus Buckingham)

Appreciating Differences

Are you trying to build a “road to appreciation?”   Begin with the Personal Histories Exercise.

Take one day out of your schedule to share what Annette Simmons calls the “Who am I story.”  One by one have your team stand before their fellow team members and give a narrative account of their lives.  What were the highs, the lows, the defining moments that shaped who they are and where they are going.  Some may use a time-line, others a graph or list of key words or icons.  No two people need to do it exactly the same, and that is what makes it so powerful.  Their focus is on where they have been, where they were protected or where they failed, who were the people that had the greatest positive impact on their lives, what brought them to this place, and what do they want to accomplish now that they are here.  No visitors are allowed.  The team members laugh, they cry, and a real team begins to form.

Annette Simmons explains the power of the story this way.  “The experience of vulnerability—without exploitation–helps us conclude that we can trust each other in other ways as well.”  This is true because our story reveals an aspect of ourselves that is otherwise invisible.  Our story breaks down the initial wall of suspicion that comes with meeting someone new.  Having facilitated this process many times, I have come to realize another benefit of telling your story.  It is not in how it influences others, but how it reminds you that your strengths are not found in perfection, and that your limitations are not fatal.

A story can transform the impotent and hopeless into a band of evangelists ready to spread the word.   Annette Simmons

Hiring Excellence

iStock_000016824550XSmallIf you were to ask a dozen nonprofits to identify their greatest organizational challenges, they would all say “money” and “manpower.”  If you were to ask them to name just one, it would be “manpower.”

Pat MacMillan, author of The Performance Factor and Hiring Excellence, has for many years observed the problems associated with recruiting for nonprofit ministries.  He has categorized his observations into six broad areas—a list of things to “not do.”

Don’t Wait Like Spiders in a Web

“The recruiting efforts of many ministries,” according to MacMillan, “are passive and as a result reactive.”  You counter that you are active.  You have lots of strategies, brochures, mailings, speakers, and conferences.  But that is not the point, says MacMillan.  You do not “seek out…disciples and challenge them to ministry.”  But rather “like spiders in their webs,” you sit and wait, ready to respond should someone stumble in.  Pat’s conclusion—the dreaded “a” word—you sorely lack aggressiveness.  You need to recruit aggressively.

Don’t Harvest Without Cultivating

Instead of being proactive in our search, writes MacMillan, “We are constrained to wait on the fringes and take what is available or left over.”  You need to develop and offer more ways to cultivate potential recruits, and be a part of their lives before they join.  It will take more resources, time, and manpower, but it will give people a reason to know you before they join.

Don’t Harbor a “Poor-man’s” Attitude

A poor-man’s attitude is one that says, “No really qualified person would want to join us.”  And I have heard some people add, “Look at me.”  That attitude, according to MacMillan, “not only makes these organizations tentative in their efforts to recruit the very best, but it also makes them more willing to abandon all their selection criteria except that of ‘availability.’”  Work is one of the arenas where people shape and give expression to the skills and gifts that are hard-wired into them.  They are looking for a place to shine, to be their best.

Don’t Set Unrealistic Expectations

Setting unrealistic expectations is not about raising the bar too high, rather it is raising the wrong bar.  MacMillan’s fourth observation was the tendency on the part of nonprofit organizations to establish unrealistic qualifications and commitment requirements.  While this might sound like the opposite of the “poor-man’s” attitude, it is more likely a failure to clearly define and then match unique jobs with unique skills.  Arthur Miller in a PMI article states that the first step to effective recruitment is to “develop critical requirements of the job to be filled.”  I know it sounds obvious, but it may not be something you have done with intention or in writing.  You may have the attitudes you want down pat, what you have not done is identify in writing the critical skills (or outcomes) you need in each of the roles that make up a complete team.

Don’t Lose Touch with the Context and Culture in Which You Recruit

“As recruiters,” writes MacMillan, “we need to understand the context and culture that shape the people we hope to recruit.”  How do you reach those who are now in their twenties and thirties?  When it comes to recruiting Gen Xers and New Millennials, there are two things we know.  First, they want to work for a person not an organization.  They must meet and interact with the person who will be their boss or team leader, and if possible, with the team itself.  This means team leaders need to be recruiting their own team.  Second, Gen Xers and New Millennials want to get feedback from their peers about the organization.  Since there is some distrust of people higher up, it is best to let them talk with people their own age.  It is also critical that these “same age” people be open, honest, and transparent with the candidate, or the war for talent is lost.

Don’t Send Dusty Messages

We all agree that up-to-date communication methods do contribute to our effectiveness in recruitment.  However, “it’s not the medium,” writes MacMillan, “that needs dusting off, it’s the message!”  Telling our story is an art.  It can be done well.  It can be done poorly.  Sometimes the one telling the story gets “a little too close to the sun” (i.e., Icarus) thinking the story is about them, and they and the organization both get burned.  Two things you can learn from Annette Simmons, author of The Story Factor; guilt and fear don’t work.  “Stories that use fear or shame to mobilize action may seem effective in the short term but can be counter productive in the long term,” she writes.  Fear and shame are emotions that move people “away from” not “towards.”  The key to attracting the very best is in communicating how others have brought their strengths to the work, every day, and how they can do the same.

Have Faith in Your Team

What does a real team look like?

Robert Quinn, in his book Deep Change, defines a team as “an enthusiastic set of competent people who have clearly defined roles, associated in common activity, working cohesively in trusting relationships, and exercising personal discipline and making individual sacrifices for the good of the team.”

Sadly, that is not what many of us have seen on our teams.  “What I often encounter,” Quinn continues, “is individual self-interest, anger, insecurity, distrust, little cohesion, and continuous political posturing.”  Quinn’s definition of what a team should be and his sobering reality of what a team often is, should awaken us all.  Defining a team is the easy part. Living it out is the hard part.

Quinn ends his chapter on teams with the following:  “The land of excellence is safely guarded from unworthy intruders.  At the gates stand two fearsome sentries—risk and learning. The keys to entry are faith and courage.”  Be willing to take some risks. Let every mistake be an opportunity to learn.  Have faith in the people you serve.  And have the courage to do your best and let God do the rest.

The Best Teams “Break with Tradition”

7afa8b4020fc80435ee4f959b46c81cbIf you are looking for a new way to define a team read Adhocracy by Robert Waterman, Jr.  Waterman is also the author of The Renewal Factor and is co-author of In Search of Excellence with Tom Peters.

In his book, Waterman argues for the creation of a new organizational form “that challenges the bureaucracy in order to embrace the new.”  Waterman says it can be as simple as a few people getting together to do business over a cup of coffee.  It appears most often, however, in the form of a short-term, multi-disciplinary team that can “break with tradition, cut across old boundaries, and…go after an opportunity.”

It is what Warren Bennis, in Managing the Dream, calls an “adaptive, problem-solving, temporary system of diverse specialists linked together…in an organized flux.”  When done well, these teams of varying sizes and shapes can help make change happen.  Their power comes from their ability to reach across traditional lines or organizational boundaries and bring different disciplines together to solve problems.

Being part of a high-performance team can be one of the greatest experiences you will ever have.  Being part of a floundering team can be one of the worst.  You can help make the difference for your teams through careful selection, targeted training, and appreciative management.  Don’t wait for the next great team to just happen. Help make it happen.

Any Questions?

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image23082102“In a heated argument over whether slaves have souls (the ancient Greeks believed that only smart people would have eternal life), Socrates bet a case of mead (Greek for Bud Light) that he could teach a common slave the Pythagorean theorem (the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides).  He had no overhead projector, handouts, or textbook.  He needed only two tools to teach the slave: (1) the capacity to ask questions and (2) the ability to listen carefully to the meaning behind the answer.  To this day the method behind his bold bet is memorialized as Socratic teaching.” — Chip Bell

The ability to ask good questions is one of your most valuable tools in building your team.  When you ask good questions you allow the other person to define the issue or problem for themselves and then solve the issue or problem by themselves.  Both of which are a win for you and a win for the other person.

Chip Bell offers a great model for asking questions that includes the following:

  1. Start by establishing the context (a setup statement, not a question).
  2. Ask questions that require higher level thinking.  For example, force a comparison or ask the person to “dig deep.”  It’s more than just “open” verses “closed” questions.  It’s asking questions to discover understanding.
  3. Avoid “why” questions, that tend to be seen as judgmental.  We may not know why.  (And if you already know why, then don’t ask the question in the first place.)
  4. Make it fun.  Stimulate their curiosity.

In the end, any question that can only be answered with a story is probably a good question.  Most of us hate questions, but few of us have trouble telling our own story.  After all, when you tell your story there is no wrong answer, and it doesn’t need to be memorized or rehearsed.  So, ask good questions, and then stop talking and start listen.  Your team will be glad you did.