What exactly do managers manage? Is it people? Objectives? Money? Time? Logistics? Or some combination of all of that?
Phil Geldart, the Guelph, Ont.-based chief executive officer of Eagle’s Flight, which delivers training programs for major corporations across the globe, believes managers must focus on managing behaviours. In turn, those behaviours, properly calibrated and in tune with what he calls the seven cornerstones of teamwork, deliver results.
“There is great potential in every human being that leaders have an obligation to release. The shareholder is looking for the best possible value and leaders are charged with getting that from their people, but most of them don’t know how to do it,” he says in an interview.
“Every result, in every company, comes from the behaviour of people. So, if you want to change the results, you really must change the behaviour.”
To do that, leaders focus on giving people tools – more technology, more training and more resources – but that doesn’t address behaviours. To proceed properly, four things must be in place:
- Conviction: Nobody will change behaviour unless they believe they have to. That can be the toughest hurdle. He surpasses it with his experiential learning training, as described in his recent book, Leading What Matters Most, a fable in which cultural transformation in a poorly performing organization is boosted by trainees taking on challenges in games that expose missing behaviours needed to be successful that in turn they can transfer to real life work.
- Knowledge: When willing to change, people want to know what they need to do differently. Too often organizations fail here because they aren’t explicit about what’s required to improve.
- Practice: If people have the knowledge, they then need to learn how to put it in practice. Employees are faced with continual other pressures, and need help making the required change. Leaders must model the desired behaviours and coach the individual while implementing the new behavioural approach. Even if those individuals have had training, the leader must show them how to apply it on the job.
- Results: You have to hold people accountable for an improvement in results after they apply the new knowledge.
“If you get those four things right, you change the behaviour. And if you change the behaviour, you change the results,” he says in the interview.
In a practical way, a manager without a big budget for outside training who wants to adopt these ideas must go to each individual on the team and ask what the leader can do to help that person contribute to the fullest. Initially, Mr. Gelbert notes, the individual won’t have sufficient trust to bare their soul. Instead, he or she will offer something safe and not terribly meaningful. But if the manager responds to that in a way that demonstrates integrity – even if only by explaining what is being suggested can’t be addressed now – it opens a path to going deeper and deeper into the individual’s emotions and thinking, until gold is unearthed. He notes this is not just about the subordinate changing; it’s about the leader changing their own behaviour and providing support for the other person to alter their behaviour.
This all happens in the context of teams because people work in teams. “World class teamwork,” he says, “requires a standard.” Any team needs to assess themselves against what he calls the seven cornerstones of teamwork, determining where weaknesses are and the behaviours needed to improve:
- Leadership: Every team must have a leader who is accountable for the results. “The team is accountable to support the leader but the team is not accountable for the results. The leader is,” he says.
- Unanimous focus on a common goal: Often team members don’t even know what the goal of their boss is or they are fixated on the objectives they believe, perhaps wrongly, are vital. “You can’t have separate opinions,” he stresses. “The team must have a common goal, and everyone should be focused on it.”
- Clearly defined roles for subgroups: Often subgroups are formed and one or more may figure they are the most important. The finance group, for example, may decide they hold the purse strings so are dominant. Each subgroup must understand their role in the context of the larger team, to which it is subordinate.
- Shared resources: This is often narrowly understood to mean the team shares its money, building and people. But more importantly, a great team shares softer resources like its ideas, experience and points of view. “If you feel as a team member those things are not wanted from you and you don’t share them, the team loses tremendously. Teams are normally cross-functional and you need the points of view of all those cross-functional people,” he says.
- Effective and frequent communication: Communication is not defined by what the leaders says but what the team members hear. And communication must be frequent so everyone is always fully up-to-date.
- Consistent, united and enthusiastic effort: If someone doesn’t want to be on the team and contribute fully, everyone else must compensate. The lapse must be addressed for the team to be fully effective.
- Periodic and temporary suppression of ego: The dangers can be that somebody suppresses their ego and never speaks up or a person’s ego is out of control and they dominate discussions. “Your ego needs to be temporarily suppressed for the well being of the team but not permanently – periodically and temporarily, so the others can flourish and share their resources,” he explains.
It’s a tall order – changing behaviours and subscribing to team standards. But they can help managers get better results.
Cannonballs
- An essential question managers should regularly ask colleagues, according to educator Fred Ende, is “what surprised you recently?”
- Change expert Greg Satell notes one of the most consistent findings over decades of innovation diffusion research is that transformational ideas follow an S-shaped diffusion curve, taking hold slowly among a group of enthusiasts, then hitting an inflection point at 10 to 20 per cent participation, from which they start accelerating exponentially before reaching a saturation point and begins to level off. So when leading change, don’t try to convince everyone at once. Find those most enthusiastic about the idea and empower them to succeed, so they can eventually bring others along.
- What could you do so your organization is extraordinary at every touch-point with clients and consumers, asks Toronto-area consultant Donald Cooper? Make a list of each touch-point, and get creative about how to be truly extraordinary.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.