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Performance Principles™
Performance Principles is an e-letter written by Eric Herrenkohl that focuses on creating the business you want by building the organization you need. This is copyrighted material. However, you can copy, reprint, or forward these newsletters in their entirety so long as any use is not for resale and the following copyright notice is included intact: Copyright © 2010, Eric Herrenkohl, Herrenkohl Consulting. All rights reserved. www.herrenkohlconsulting.com, 610-658-9790.
How an Individual Star Can Become a Powerful Coach
A Boeing executive recently told me about one of the best hires he ever made. Among other things, this individual is a terrific coach. As his boss described, “he knows the right answer 95 percent of the time but spends a majority of his time asking questions, not providing answers. This helps everyone else get engaged in the project and in turn create and contribute their own valuable ideas.”
Performance Principle: The best coaches know most of the answers but focus their time on asking questions. In this economic environment, we need our strongest people to help everyone else on the team produce better results. If your company is like others with which I work, you have several people who could dramatically increase their value if they learned to be better coaches. How does someone with strong individual ability become an effective coach? Here are some steps:
1. You don’t have anything to prove. In your specialty, you are an expert and everyone knows it. Stop trying to impress people with what you know. We are already impressed with you. Use your credibility to be a great coach. People want to learn from you because you’re an expert; take advantage of the opportunity.
2. Ask more questions. The best executives help others to think for themselves. Ask good questions that help people figure out the answers for themselves. If you will start doing more of this, there is no telling how much of a positive impact you will have around your company.
3. Do not be patronizing. If others perceive that you look down on them because you know the answers and they do not, you are dead as a coach. If others sense that you respect their intelligence and ability to work out problems for themselves, they will follow you anywhere. You decide which person you want to be.
4. Document and share your knowledge. The most valuable people in an organization share their knowledge. If you are willing to put some simple explanations and checklists together on key issues and share them with others, you will be a hero around your place.
5. Ask for goals and commitments. Spend the last 15 to 20 minutes of every meeting having people commit to their next actions and completion dates. If you teach people what to do but do not help them set clear deadlines for doing it, you are lecturing not coaching.
6. Follow Up. Please do not believe that one terrific coaching session is enough to improve results. 80% of great coaching is in the follow up. Do not end a coaching session without setting a date and time for your next session. Only follow this step if you want to see people produce better results.
7. Reject reverse delegation. If you follow the points above, do not allow your people to delegate their work back to you. If people have incomplete or flawed work, point out the mistakes and ask them to fix them themselves.
If you follow these steps, you will help everyone around you to become more effective. That is what I call increasing your value.
A-Players are Attracted by High Standards
An executive recently interviewed for and accepted a leadership role with a new company. As part of the interview process, the company required him to go through multiple interviews and a series of leadership and management assessments. The human resource person apologized to this man for how much time the whole process took – she was embarrassed that he had to take most of the day to complete the assessment process. The man’s reply was telling. He said, “Please don’t apologize, I think this assessment process is terrific. It communicates that you are serious about hiring the best leaders you can find for this company.” Far from being put-off by the demanding standards of this company, he was attracted by them and took the job.
If your current process for interviewing and hiring new employees is less than rigorous, you may be concerned that an in-depth, time-consuming interview process will scare off good people. I have found just the opposite to be true. A-players are attracted by high standards. They want to work with other strong, effective people. When you take them through a challenging interview process, they figure that your current employees must be pretty good – otherwise they would never have made it through the process.
Here are five steps for taking your job interview process to the next level:
1. Benchmark the job. When I help companies to improve their interview process, we start by defining success for the position and being specific about the talents and experiences people must have to be successful. If you haven’t defined these factors, you can’t ask good questions in the interview.
2. Create an interview scorecard. Judge every candidate according to the same performance-related criteria. This helps you to avoid the tendency to “fall in love” with a candidate who interviews well but can’t or won’t perform. It also helps you to focus on candidates who may start out the interview process slowly, but in the end have all the characteristics of an A-player.
3. Use multiple interviewers. You will make better hiring decisions if you have the same group of informed people interview every candidate. Include all the interviewers in creating the job benchmark – it will keep you all on the same page when you are making your final hiring decision.
4. Do a post-game analysis. Immediately after an interview, each interviewer should individually score the candidate using the scorecard. Then, the interviewers discuss their scores and come to agreement on the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate. It never fails that one interviewer catches an important point that everyone else missed.
5. Use multiple visits. Have candidates come back for at least a second interview. This gives you an opportunity to see how each person follows up and follows through.
6. Use validated assessment instruments. Good assessments give you insight into people that you will never get from an interview. Incorporate them early enough into the interview process that you can follow up on the results in a second interview.
There is no downside to following these steps every time you need to fill a position. Not only do they help you to avoid hiring mistakes – they help to attract the best people to your company!
I work with companies across the country on implementing this process – if you want more information, just drop me an email or give me a call. I would love to talk with you.
Investing in Relationships
In 1993, mountain climber Greg Mortenson got lost after a failed attempt to summit K2 in the Himalayan mountains. He wandered into a remote village in Pakistan where the locals cared for him. As he recovered, he found that the 82 children of Korphe had no school building and a teacher only 3 days a week. They spent all of their school hours sitting outside scratching their lessons onto slates or into the dirt with sticks. He vowed that he would return to the village to help build a school. Within 10 years he had built not only the school in Korphe but 55 schools for the children of Pakistan.
During the construction of that first school, Mortenson had to get figure out how to get things done with people in this culture. The village chief pulled him aside one day and told him “If you want to thrive here, you must respect our ways. The first time you share tea with us, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family and for our family we are prepared to do anything, even die” (from Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin).
Performance Principle: Relationships are an investment. Investing in relationships can often seem like a waste of time. However, if you are intentional about investing in relationships, you will ultimately accomplish much more than you ever would or could alone. Here are six steps you can take to build relationships effectively:
1. Ask and listen, don’t talk and tell. In other words, shut up and listen. People are a lot more interested in hearing themselves talk than in hearing what you have to say. I have had people comment that they had a great conversation with me and I barely said a word! There are very few good listeners in the world. Become one of them.
2. Get out of the office. Relationships are developed on the golf course, at your kid’s soccer game, or at dinner – not at the office. Spending time with people socially accelerates the velocity with which trusting relationships are developed. Be intentional about investing time with people outside of 8-5.
3. Be a referral source. Don’t wait for others to refer to you, be a source of referrals for them. Referrals deepen relationships. People are busy, but they will always take time for you if you are a source of business.
4. Reconnect. Don’t neglect relationships from the past. Take the time to reach out to people you know from former jobs or school days gone past. People who know you from the past can be some of the most valuable and meaningful relationships that you have.
5. Stay until the quesadillas are scorched. When you go to a networking event, stay until the bitter end. Don’t leave until you see the last quesadilla scorching on the bottom of the chafing dish. It is invariably in the last half hour of these events that I have the one conversation that makes it all worthwhile.
Leaders vs. Loners
A client of mine recently lost a key manager from his business. This departure coincided with my client’s increased desire to get re-involved in the day-to-day operations of the business. As he got more involved, he realized that many of the employees in the business had great ideas for how things could be done better. But they had been unable or unwilling to step up, speak out, and take responsibility when the former manager was still there. That manager, for all his strengths, had been something of a one-man show. If things needed to get done, he did them. And while this worked well for a while, in the end the other employees were not contributing all they could because they didn’t want to step on his toes.
Performance Principle: There is a difference between a leader and a loner. Leaders draw the best out of other people. Loners, even talented ones, ultimately limit the contributions of the group by focusing on their own efforts. Is your management team made up of leaders or loners?
Here are some points to consider:
- Leaders say we, loners say I. The best leaders take pleasure in the achievements of others. If you have a manager who focuses on his own efforts, remind him that leadership is about encouraging the efforts of others.
- Leaders take people along; loners leave their passenger seat empty. Most of the best teaching and mentoring in business (and life) is informal. Good leaders take their people along with them to meetings, conferences, and presentations. They know that in addition to participating in the session itself, great coaching happens driving to and from meetings or over beer at the hotel after a big presentation.
- Leaders set goals for their people; loners leave people to their own devices. The best employees are always thinking about their own future. If the leaders in your organization do not define goals and career path for these people, you risk losing them. Good leaders are always thinking ahead about the future of their key people.
- Leaders encourage communication, loners squelch it. The last things you need in your organization are fiefdoms and turf fights. Leaders who are secure have no problem with their people communicating freely with others in the organization, including with those at the top. Insecure leaders require all communication to flow through them. Don’t tolerate control-freak behavior from your leaders – it is a sign of weakness not strength.
- Leaders develop successors, loners regard themselves as indispensable. At the brokerage and financial firm Edward Jones, you cannot be considered for a promotion until you have identified internal candidates to take your current job. The best leaders develop other leaders who can fill their shoes. Are your leaders developing other leaders or just developing followers?
Who Do You Have in the Booth?
Back in December, the Washington Redskins were playing the Vikings in Minnesota. The Redskins were up by 11 when they turned the ball over. The crowd went crazy at the Metrodome, and the Vikings seemed to have recaptured the momentum and to have a chance to win the game. Then Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs challenged the play, saying the Vikings had 12 men on the field. The challenge was upheld. The Redskins got the ball back, scored a touchdown, and iced the win.
As I watched this unfold, I immediately thought – some assistant coach high up in the Redskins booth just saved the game. It was Bill Khayat, a Redskins assistant coach who caught the extra man on the field. Joe Gibbs, as seasoned and accomplished a coach as he is, could never have caught that infraction himself. He needed someone else to be paying attention, someone who was good and someone he trusted.
Performance Principle: Who do you have in the booth for your business? As your business grows, you need people you can trust. If you attempt to stay in control of every aspect of your business, you will start to miss opportunities. I see this in my clients all the time. In retail, a great employee is someone you trust to represent your store to your customers and to your community. In financial services, a great employee is someone who communicates to clients that their priorities and their goals truly matter. In architecture, a great employee is someone who can manage a complicated project on time, on budget, with few if any mistakes. In the kitchen & bath industry, a great employee is someone who knows how to sell and knows how to design.
Questions to Consider:
- First, how many of your current employees do you trust to run the operations if you are not there? Do you have at least one person that can oversee the operation in your absence?
- Second, how many of your current employees are capable of generating new business? Do you have people on staff with the combination of sales skills and product or service knowledge required to open up new business relationships?
- Third, how many of your current employees are true ambassadors for your business? Do you have at least one person in your organization who represents your business to the outside world as well as you do?
