Blanchard LeaderChat

In a new post for Fast Company, “Do Your People Really Know What You Expect From Them?,” Ken and Scott Blanchard identify a common pattern at work.

When you first employ people, relationships start off very clear. Both you and the new employees have a clear sense of what they are supposed to do. Over time, however, many work roles begin to evolve into something different based on direction, redirection, praisings, and reprimands. It’s a multi-faceted process that includes where the employee wants to go with their career, how clear the manager has been with spelling out goals, and the type and amount of performance feedback that the employee has been receiving along the way.

Sometimes, managers and direct reports can find themselves in a completely different place from where they first started. Here’s a way to see if that’s happened to you.

Try this test

Take a minute to identify the five things or results, in descending order of importance, that you hold an employee accountable for. List the most important goal as #1, the second most important goal as #2, etc. Now, ask that employee to write down the five things or results he or she feels most accountable for. Don’t reveal your list until the employee is finished writing. Now compare the two lists. To what degree do the two lists match in terms of priority and content? If you are like most companies we work with, you’ll find that the two lists only have about a 20 percent agreement.

Alignment is key

An aligned purpose and clear expectations are the foundation of an effective work environment. All good performance starts with clear goals. Make sure that your people’s work is on track and on target.

PS: You can read more about Ken and Scott’s thoughts on managing performance—and see all of their previous blog entries at Fast Company, here.

Boss watching is a fact of life in many organizations. Frontline employees are more concerned with keeping the boss happy than they are with keeping the customer happy. Leaders can help employees focus in the right direction by taking the mystery out of what people can expect from them as a leader.

Employees are always concerned about how their boss will react when he or she finds out about a situation. This uncertainty keeps people unwilling to step out of tightly defined roles for fear that they will do something wrong. People shouldn’t have to guess how their leader would respond. Leaders can improve the situation—and open up a little playing room for employees—by clearly sharing their expectations.

Read more…

That’s really a trick question.   When a company’s organizational vision, department strategies, and individual goals are aligned properly the answer to this question should be, “All three, of course.”  If you feel that each of these is a separate direction, you and your organization are out of alignment.

When that happens, the net result is competing priorities, wasted effort and diminished engagement.  If that’s what you are experiencing, here are a couple of strategies to explore depending on your level in the organization.

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An effective team brings together people from different backgrounds and different experiences to work together toward a common goal. Yet most teams do not ever achieve their full potential because team members do not take the time to explore and agree on the team’s purpose, values, and destination.

Jesse Lyn Stoner, a leading expert on the topic of visioning, and coauthor with Ken Blanchard of Full Steam Ahead!: Unleash the Power of Vision in Your Work and Your Life believes that when team members set these foundational pieces in place, there is less wasted time, less conflicting priorities, and less interpersonal conflict because team members trust they are all moving in the same direction, guided by the same values.

In a recent article for Ignite!, Stoner recommends a three step approach to getting people aligned and working together effectively.

Read more…

Trust, commitment, and morale all took a hit as many companies struggled through the economic downturn of the past two years.  Ken Blanchard believes that there are three key strategies that leaders can employ to return a wounded organization to full health:  

1. Be a bearer of hope
2. Make your people your business partners
3. Become a servant leader

In this short video Ken describes how re-establishing trust, creating a compelling picture of the future, and getting everyone aligned and moving in the same direction is the quickest path to accelerated growth.  To see Ken’s full presentation on this subject, check out Healing the Wounded Organization.

Years ago, business owners were asked, “If you had to choose between a fire that wiped out your facilities versus having all of your people quit and walk out at the same time, which option would you take?” Almost everyone said they’d rather lose their buildings and equipment because to rebuild their human organization would require a lot more effort and be more difficult to accomplish.

In the latest issue of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Ignite newsletter, co-founder Ken Blanchard shares how the recession of the past two years put many organizations into a position of having to decide between people and profits in order to stay in business. Some of those decisions were painful, and in some cases, the way decisions were made had an adverse impact on the human side of the organization. The facilities and the equipment are intact, but the people are not present in the same way as before.

As a result says Blanchard, “People are looking for clues to see if their organization is only interested in the bottom line, or if they are equally concerned with the people side of the business.”

For leaders looking to rebuild trust, commitment, and morale in their organizations, Blanchard recommends senior leaders focus on creating a compelling vision, while immediate managers work to implement plans by connecting individual work to overall goals. 

As Blanchard explains, “Senior leaders need to create a compelling vision that defines or redefines the organization’s business. The key here is to have a clear focus on the customer and make that everyone’s goal. During the past recession, people saw what looked like self-serving behavior on the part of a lot of leaders. In many organizations, it seemed as if top leaders saw the organization only as a way to achieve personal ends. In contrast, when senior leaders identify a compelling vision of the future and align the organization’s goals and values toward this vision, everyone can move in the right direction and focus their energy on the customer.

“Frontline managers need to make sure that each and every employee’s work is connected to an overall department or organizational goal and that the employee can see how their work has an impact. To build trust and respect with direct reports, frontline managers should schedule regular one-on-one meetings with their people. Managers should use these sessions to clarify expectations, solicit input, answer questions, and provide feedback. Nothing shows that you care and respect a person—and their work—more than spending time with them, checking on their progress, and providing help when necessary.”

To read more about Ken Blanchard’s thoughts on rebuilding trust, commitment, and morale, be sure to check out the complete article here.  To participate in a complimentary webinar Ken Blanchard will be conducting on this topic visit the information page for Healing the Wounded Organization.  The webinar is free and hosted by Cisco WebEx.  Click here for details.

There is a classic fable about a man who approaches three laborers breaking and shaping rocks. The man asks the first laborer what he is doing. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m breaking rocks,” the laborer replies. The man asks the second laborer what he is doing and he responds that he is building a wall. The man then asks the third laborer what he is doing and the laborer responds, “I’m building a cathedral.” 

The three men are all doing the same work, but each with a different perception of its relative worth. Which man do you suppose is coming to work happier and more engaged?

The first man sees his work as a job, the second man sees his work as a task, but it’s the third man who sees his work as a worthy calling, because he is clear about the bigger picture and how his work connects and adds value.

And it is that man who, according to Blanchard employee work passion research, has more positive intentions about

• performing at an above-average level
• being a good organizational citizen
• using more discretionary effort on behalf of the organization
• remaining with the organization
• endorsing the organization and its leadership to others

In a new monthly column for Fast Company, Scott and Ken Blanchard look at the power of meaningful work and alignment. For leaders looking to rekindle a “cathedral” point of view in their people they suggest:

• First, remember why you got into business in the first place. Without an occasional reminder, sometimes it really can seem like the only reason the organization exists is to make money for shareholders.
• Second, connect the dots between an individual’s work and the organization’s overall goals. Make sure that individual tasks and roles are aligned to current initiatives by regularly reviewing what people are working on and how it is contributing to overall performance.

Helping people see and understand the meaningfulness of their work is one of the most powerful things you can do to create strong and powerfully motivated employees. To learn more about creating a sense of meaningful work in your organization, check out Scott and Ken’s new column at Fast Company here.  To learn more about Blanchard’s research into employee work passion, follow this link to Employee Passion: The New Rules of Engagement or From Engagement to Employee Work Passion: A Deeper Understanding of the Employee Work Passion Framework

Unfortunately, most New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by Valentine’s Day.  Just as distressing, most 2011 work goals are safely filed away in a desk drawer by the same time.  That’s a shame considering all of the work that went into creating them just a couple of months ago.  Take a minute today to review those goals you set for yourself.  Are you still on track—or have the day-to-day issues we each face pulled you in a dozen different directions already?

All good performance starts with clear goals.  Here are three questions to make sure you are heading in the right direction:

1. Are your goals aligned with departmental and organizational objectives?  Your organization has probably finalized its 2011 strategic planning.  Take a moment to make sure that your individual goals are in alignment with the organization.  You don’t want to be working tangentially or at cross purposes.
2. Are you trying to do too much?  7 or 10 goals are too many for any person to truly focus on.  Instead, choose the 3 to 5 goals that will have the most impact.  That should be a lot clearer now with seven weeks of the new year under your belt.
3. Are you getting feedback on how you’re doing?  By now, you and your manager should have had at least one conversation on how you are progressing toward your goals.  If not, schedule a one-on-one to discuss.  Feedback is a critical component of good performance.

In most organizations, goals are set at the beginning of the year, filed away, and not seen again until it’s time for performance review.  The result is poorly aligned work and unpleasant surprises at the end of the year.  Don’t let that happen to you.  Revisit your goals often, talk to your immediate manager about them on a regular basis, and adjust them as necessary to meet the changing needs of the organization.

Why all the surprise when targets aren’t hit and people seem confused? If you look at most organizations, processes and procedures are not in place to help leaders set goals, manage performance, and conduct reviews in a way that brings out the best in people. To be effective, a performance management system has to provide people with direction, support, and encouragement. See how your organization is doing in these three key areas:

1. Performance Planning

All good performance starts with clear goals. Clarifying goals involves making sure that people understand two things: first, what they are being asked to do—their areas of accountability—and second, what good performance looks like—the performance standards by which they will be evaluated. Most organizations do a good job on performance planning and set very clear goals. However, after goal setting, what do you think happens to those goals? Most often they get filed, and no one looks at them until they are told it’s time for performance reviews. Then everybody runs around, bumping into each other, trying to find the goals.

2. Performance Coaching

Leaders often assume that their work direction conversations are so clear that there is no need for follow-up or that they are so busy that they can’t take the time. Many managers do that very same thing. They hire people, tell them what to do, and then leave them alone and assume good performance will follow. In other words, they abdicate; they don’t delegate. This sets up the old leave alone/zap management style. To counteract this, schedule and hold progress-check meetings. You will be able to catch problems before they become major and significantly increase the probability that your direct report’s performance on the goal will meet your expectations. Progress-check conversations enhance the quality of your relationships, build trust and commitment, open lines of communication, and diminish the amount of time spent fighting brush fires.

3. Performance Review

This is where a person’s performance over the course of a year is summed up. If steps one and two have been done properly, the year-end performance review will just be a review of what has already been discussed. There will be no surprises. Instead, managers and direct reports will be reviewing and celebrating the tasks they have already been working on. When progress-check meetings are scheduled according to development level, open, honest discussions about the direct report’s performance take place on an ongoing basis, creating mutual understanding and agreement.

How is your organization doing in these three key areas?

Clear goals, solid day-to-day coaching, and “no surprise” performance reviews are hallmarks of a great performance management system. Think about your own organization, and your own conversations with managers and direct reports you work with. Are there areas where you could improve?

PS: If you would like to learn how one organization has put these practices into use, be sure to check out today’s webinar of 3 Keys to Effective Performance Management. WD-40 CEO Garry Ridge will be sharing how he has created a high involvement, high performance work culture that has increased performance and engagement levels. The session is free and is being broadcast today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific (5:00 p.m. GMT).

Although most managers agree with the importance of setting goals, many do not take the time to clearly develop goals with their people. As a result, people tend to get caught in the “activity trap,” where they become busy doing things, but not necessarily the right things. In his book Leading at a Higher Level, business author Ken Blanchard recommends that managers set SMART goals with their people. SMART is an acronym for the most important factors to remember in setting quality goals:

Specific and measurable. You don’t say to somebody, “I want you to improve.” You have to be specific about the area that needs improvement and what good performance looks like. Being specific reinforces the old saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Therefore, goals have to be specific, observable, and measurable.

Motivating. Not every job people are asked to do will be super-exciting, but having motivating goals helps. Sometimes all people need to know is why the task is important. The “why” explains how the person’s task fits in with overall job performance and the goals and objectives of the unit, division, organization, and customer.  It clarifies how the task supports higher-level outcomes. People want to know that what they do makes a difference. That’s motivating.

Attainable. It’s a false assumption that to motivate people you have to set goals that are unattainable. What really motivates people is to have moderately difficult but achievable goals.

In a classic research experiment on achievement motivation, researcher David McClelland asked people to throw rings at a stake from any distance they chose. McClelland found that high achievers positioned themselves the appropriate distance from the stake through experimentation.  If they threw the rings from a certain spot and made most of their tosses, they moved back. If they missed most of their tosses, they moved forward. Why? McClelland found that high achievers like to set moderately difficult but attainable goals—that is, goals that stretch them but are not impossible. People who set goals that are too easy or too difficult don’t want to be judged or held accountable.

Relevant. Eighty percent of the performance you want from people comes from the 20 percent of the activities they could get involved in. Therefore, a goal is relevant if it addresses one of the 20-percent activities that make a difference in overall performance.

Trackable and time-bound. As a manager, you want to be able to praise progress or redirect inappropriate behavior. To do that, you must be able to measure or count performance frequently, which means you need to put a record-keeping system in place to track performance. If a goal consists of completing a report by June 1, the chances of receiving an acceptable, even outstanding, report will increase if interim reports are required.

Goals energize people when they are set correctly. Make sure your people know what they are being asked to do (their areas of accountability) and what good performance looks like (the performance standards by which they will be evaluated). It’s a great way to get 2011 off to a successful start!

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