Blanchard LeaderChat

In a recent blog post, Gen Y: The Doom of Middle Managers? Entry-Level Rebel Jessica Stillman points to data that suggests Gen Y workers might not need traditional middle managers. 

Why? 

Changes in technology, attitudes, and the nature of work eliminate the need for supervisors who only see their job as telling people what to do and then evaluating performance at an annual review.

If that is what’s happening in your organization, consider asking senior leadership to create a higher standard for managers.  Setting goals and conducting performance reviews are just the beginning of a middle manager’s job.  Their real value is in their ability to access resources, remove obstacles, and provide day-to-day coaching for the people who report to them. 

If your manager is not providing you with the support that you need to succeed, here are three things to ask for (and a proven way on how to ask for it.)

What to ask for

1. A clear sense of how your job impacts key departmental goals. Everyone needs to know that their work is meaningful and to have some clear alignment between what they do and what the organization is trying to accomplish.  If you can’t point to a key departmental objective and how your work is impacting it, you do not have the alignment that should be in place.
2. A well defined job that includes some routine and some challenging tasks. In a healthy work environment, you will typically have 3-5 goals that you need to accomplish.  If your job is structured properly, some of those tasks will be very achievable with your present skills while others are more of a stretch that you cannot accomplish with your current skill set and resources. This mix is an essential component of a satisfying job that also encourages career growth.
3. A clear agreement with your boss about where you are at and what you need to succeed.  For tasks where you are self sufficient you need an agreement with your boss to give you the autonomy you deserve to accomplish the task as you see fit.  No one likes being micromanaged on tasks they are capable of achieving on their own.  For tasks that are beyond your current skill level and immediate resources, you need an agreement for the direction and support that will help you access the budget, training, and expertise you need to get the job done.

How to ask for it

• Use “I need” statements.  One of the most powerful ways you can get the help you need to accomplish your work goals is to use “I need” statements.  For example, “In order to process customer orders more efficiently, I need a higher level of access into our customer database,” or “In order to create the type of social media campaign and metrics that we are talking about, I need some additional training.”  For best results, pair any “I need” statement with three possible solutions.  Very few bosses will turn down this type of request—especially when it is in pursuit of legitimate departmental goals.

A good middle manager or front line supervisor takes strategic directives and turns them into results.  Is that the role your immediate manager is playing?  If not, expect more.  Use “I need” statements to make sure that your job is aligned,  that you have a mix of routine and stretch goals, and that you have an immediate supervisor committed to helping you access the resources you need to succeed.

Good middle managers will never be obsolete.  That distinction is only reserved for managers who see their role as assigning tasks and evaluating others.  That truly is obsolete, not just for the next generation of employees, but for all employees.

Join The Ken Blanchard Companies for a complimentary webinar and online chat beginning today at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time (12:00 noon Eastern).

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, coauthor of Coaching in Organizations and Leading at a Higher Level will be discussing three strategies for getting people off to a fast start in a new role in a special presentation of On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees.

The webinar is free and seats are still available if you would like to join over 600 people expected to participate. Immediately after the webinar, Madeleine will be answering follow-up questions over at our sister blog, The Coaching Source for about 30 minutes.

We hope you can join us later today for this special complimentary event courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

8/22/11 update: Recording of this event is now available online. To learn more, visit On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees

It’s harder than ever to avoid becoming a “seagull manager” these days.  That’s when you fly in, make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, and then fly away again.  It’s a hit-and-run management behavior that’s easy to fall into when you find yourself with too much on your plate and too little time to accomplish it. 

How are you doing with the double challenge of accomplishing your own work while still managing the work performance of others?  If you’re afraid you’re seeing a little seagull behavior in yourself lately, here are three ways to get back on track with a more helpful approach:

1. Make sure you know what your people are working on.  Manager’s shouldn’t be surprised at what their people are working on but this often happens because goals are unclear, or are not in alignment with overall department objectives.  Make sure that everyone in your group has a clear set of 3-5 objectives and that they are mapped to a specific organizational objective.
2. Identify everyone’s development level for their specific tasks. A good group of goals will include tasks that are familiar and routine to an employee plus one or two stretch goals that will require some growth on their part. Review each of your direct report’s goals.  Which tasks can they easily accomplish on their own—and which tasks will they need help with?  Their development level on each task will determine the proper amount of input you’ll need to provide.
3. Schedule regular meeting time.  A weekly check-in for 20-30 minutes can do wonders for putting out all of the small daily brush fires that occur before they turn into raging infernos.  A little bit of structured time to review how your people are doing in each of their key areas is a great way to get started.   Don’t turn this into a weekly evaluation though.  Let the employee guide the conversation.  The idea here is to create a safe space for employee’s to ask for help when needed.

Even when people work together in the same building, it is still surprising to see how little conversation can occur between managers and their direct reports.  With today’s increased workload, it is often easier to keep your head down and your door closed.  Don’t let that happen to you and your people.  Schedule some time to meet with your direct reports on a regular basis.  It can save a lot of screeching and wing-flapping later on.

A lot of leaders are disappointed these days. Even though they work hard to provide clear direction to their people, when they check in on progress at the end of the month, they often find that little has changed.

The problem, according to Dr. Vicki Halsey of The Ken Blanchard Companies is that leaders confuse telling with teaching.  In a recent article for the Blanchard Companies’ Ignite! newsletter, Halsey explains that, “If leaders want people to develop new behaviors, they have to become better teachers of what to do and how to do it.”

For leaders looking to get started, Halsey recommends three strategies:

1. Break Learning Down into Manageable Chunks

Leaders need to give people an opportunity to learn the new skills over time, using a variety of different modalities that go beyond a one-time exposure to the content.

2. Create Meaning to Embed Learning

Executives need to generate meaning for the new learning. They need to answer the question “Why is this important for me to learn?” Generating this meaning and connecting it to learning the new skill helps people retain the skill over the long term because now they can see the importance of the task.

3. Remember the 70/30 Rule

According to Halsey, “When people are getting ready for a presentation they focus 70 percent of their time on what they are going to say.” Halsey believes this time would be better spent thinking about how to create a learner-centered environment that helps people learn. As she explains, “Leaders need to shift their focus and spend only 30 percent of their time worrying about what they need to say and 70 percent on how to create the greatest transfer of learning to their participants.

According to Halsey, “The biggest thing is to teach, not tell. Very often leaders think that because they are telling people what they want them to do, people are turning around and doing it. We need to realize that teaching, not telling, is a discipline at which all leaders need to become effective—because the more you teach, the more people will learn and the more successful they will be.”

You can read more of Halsey’s advice to leaders at Leaders Need to Be Teachers.  Also check out Halsey’s free July 20 webinar on 6 Keys to Creating Learning Experiences that Inspire and Engage courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

It’s that time of year when many of us pause, look back, and reflect on the past twelve months.  One of the most powerful ways you can improve the performance of your company is by evaluating the quality of your leadership.  What can you do for this coming year?  Here’s some advice for leaders from bestselling author and management guru Ken Blanchard.

How can a leader reinvent himself or herself? 

A. I think a leader reinvents himself or herself by constantly wanting to learn.  When you stop learning, you might as well lie down because you’re dead. I think every leader ought to set a personal goal each year about what will they be able to put on their resume next year that they didn’t have last year.  It might be learning a new language.  It could be learning a new computer program.  Constantly put yourself in a learning mode.

What does it take to be a good leader?

A. The biggest thing it takes to be a good leader is humility.  People with humility don’t think less of themselves—they just think about themselves less.  I think Rick Warren said it well in his book, The Purpose Driven Life.  The first sentence of that book is a whole leadership training program.  He said, “It’s not about you.”  We can accomplish that if we can get leaders to realize that they are there for the mission, for their clients, for their people, and not for themselves.

Can a leader also be a good coach?

 A. Yes, coaching is a definite part of leadership.  There are two parts of leadership.  One is the visionary direction part of leadership which is, “Where are we going?” and “What are we trying to accomplish?”  That has to be the responsibility of the traditional hierarchy.  It doesn’t mean that you don’t involve other people, but people look to the president, department chairman, and other traditional leaders to make sure that everybody knows where they are going.

The second part of leadership is implementation, which is “How do we live according to the vision, direction, and values that we have established?”  With that you have to turn the traditional hierarchy upside down.  So now the leaders who played a major role in setting the vision are at the bottom cheerleading, supporting, and coaching.

This is where the coaching process comes in because in developing your people there are three parts: Performance Planning where you are setting the goals and objectives; Day-to-Day Coaching when you are helping people win and accomplish their goals; and then there is Performance Evaluation.

In most companies, the majority of time is spent on performance evaluation with managers focused on judging people’s behavior.  Some companies do a pretty good job of goal setting but then they file the goals away until somebody says it is performance review time and then they run around looking for the goals. The thing that is least done is the day-to-day coaching, so coaching is a very important part of leadership.

What can you do from a personal leadership perspective to help your people and your organization perform at a higher level in 2011? 

Successful leaders recognize that profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people.  What can you do to create that type of environment within your organization? The New Year is a great time to start!

PS: Ken Blanchard will be conducting a free webinar with Colleen Barrett, president emeritus of Southwest Airlines, on January 26.  It’s based on their new book, Lead with LUV.  To learn more, or to register, visit Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success at the Blanchard website.

Most workers do not feel that their employee performance reviews are valuable. That is what Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40 Company, discovered when he surveyed students in a business course he teaches at the University of San Diego.

The problem, according to Ridge, is that most performance systems are used for the wrong reasons. They are either arbitrary, conducted out of habit, or they are used just in case it is ever necessary to document evidence to fire someone. Ridge thinks that performance reviews should be used to develop people—not to evaluate them.

It’s a philosophy he shares with Ken Blanchard and which they wrote about in their book Helping People Win at Work: A Business Philosophy Called “Don’t Mark My Paper, Help Me Get an A.”

According to Blanchard and Ridge, managers need to move away from evaluating people and instead focus on coaching and helping people get A’s.  For managers ready to embrace coaching instead of evaluating, the two authors recommend the following three steps:

1. Set clear goals. All good performance starts with clear goals. Make sure that objectives and performance standards are established.
2. Provide day-to-day coaching. This is where a manager observes and monitors the performance of his or her people, praising progress and redirecting where necessary.
3. No surprises at the annual review. The biggest difference in the Helping People Win at Work approach is that the annual review is not used as an end-of-the-year evaluation tool. Instead, it is used throughout the year as a guide to how managers and direct reports work together to help employees get A’s.

When you help people win at work, both the organization and the employees benefit.

As Ridge explains, “When employees have clear expectations, meaningful work, and day-to-day support, it impacts their level of engagement. At WD-40, our engagement number is 93%, which I believe is three times the average. It means that people come to work doing things that mean something to them, that they feel is making a difference in the world today, and that is developing them internally as well.

Download Free eBook version of Helping People Win at Work!

Between now and November 13, you can download a free Kindle copy of Helping People Win At Work from Amazon.com.  Just click on the link above to see how you can download a free copy to your computer or mobile device.

HR and senior leaders play a special role in making sure that coaching is successful in an organization. One of the ways is by positioning executive coaching correctly according to Linda Miller in a new article for The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Ignite newsletter.

As Miller, a Master Certified Coach and Global Liaison for coaching explains, “It’s important that coaching is positioned as an investment in development and not as something punitive. You want executives to be looking forward to being tapped on the shoulder for coaching rather than fretting if they get that phone call that says, ‘Guess what, you have an executive coach who has been assigned to help you.’” Read more…

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services Division has a soft spot for new managers.  She understands the challenges people face when they make the shift from an individual contributor to a supervisor. 

To help with the transition, Homan-Blanchard recommends that new managers take a minute to catch their breath and then review a couple of the new changes in their life. Three things—getting comfortable with being a beginner again, scoring some early wins, and learning how to ask for help—can make the transition smoother.

1. Being a beginner again.  This is the first shock that many new managers experience and it can be a big one.  Making the shift from being a highly-competent individual contributor to a new life as a rookie manager can be a humbling experience.  The important thing is how you react to it.  If you respond by acting like you know it all, you’re going to be in trouble.  If you recognize that your new at this, and need a lot of direction and support, you’ll increase your chances of success.
2. Score some early wins.  New managers need to establish some credibility and confidence among the people they’re leading.  One good way to do this is by finding a relatively simple project, something small that can generate an early win.  Nothing builds confidence like success.
3. Ask for help. Sometimes new managers fall into a trap of thinking that they are supposed to have all the answers now.  Remember that you’re new at this.  If anything, you’ve probably got more to learn than ever before. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness.  Pretending you have all the answers, or stumbling ahead when you don’t, is.  Find someone in the organization you admire as a good leader and pursue a possible mentoring relationship.  (Not your new boss, by the way.)  Take them to lunch, pick their brain, and learn everything you can.

To read more about Homan-Blanchard’s thinking on how to start fast as a new manager, be sure to check out First Time Manager, It’s Not Just About You Anymore. You can also access a webinar that has even more advice on making your first year a good one.  Survival Skills for First-Year Managers webinar recording

Effective leaders know that there is no one best way to manage people. Instead, they adapt their style according to the development level of the people they are managing. 

In The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Situational Leadership® II Model, managers are taught to modify the amount of direction and support they give to direct reports based on their skill and commitment levels for the task at hand.  To make this easier to understand, Blanchard uses four easy to remember descriptors to identify the four stages of development: Enthusiastic Beginner, Disillusioned Learner, Capable but Cautious Performer, and Self-Reliant Achiever. 

• Enthusiastic Beginner–Can you remember when you first started to learn to ride a bicycle? You were so excited sometimes that you couldn’t even sleep at night, even though you didn’t have a clue how to actually ride a bike. You were a classic Enthusiastic Beginner who needed direction. At this point you had enthusiasm for the task but not a lot of experience. You needed someone to show you how—in a step-by-step process. 
• Disillusioned Learner–Remember the first time you took a fall on your bike? As you were picking yourself up off the pavement, you might have wondered why you decided to learn to ride in the first place and whether you would ever really master it. Now you had reached the Disillusioned Learner stage, and you needed coaching. This is a combination of direction mixed in with a lot of support to help you get through this rough patch. 
• Capable but Cautious Performer–Once you were able to ride your bike with your parent cheering you on, that confidence probably became shaky the first time you decided to take your bike out for a spin without your cheerleader and supporter close at hand. At this point, you were a Capable but Cautious Performer in need of support. You knew how to ride, you just needed some extra encouragement to keep going. 
• Self-Reliant Achiever–Finally, you reached the stage where your bicycle seemed to be a part of you. You could ride it without even thinking about it. You were truly a Self-Reliant Achiever, and your parents could delegate to you the job of having fun on your bike. Just don’t let them see you jumping off of that ramp. 

Developing More Effective Leaders

There are still people out there who think there is only one best way of leading people. Experienced managers know that this is not the case. Take a look in your own organization. Notice what the best managers in your company are doing. Chances are you will see them adjusting their management style to meet the needs of the people they are working with. 

Effective leaders know that there is no one best way to manage people. Managers looking to improve their ability to lead people to higher levels of performance need to adapt their style to match the development level of the people they are managing. It is a proven approach that will help managers lead people to their best performance every time. 

To learn more about taking a situational approach to leading and developing others, be sure to check out the free, on-demand webcast, Managing and Developing People to Be Their Best: The 3 Keys to Becoming a Smart, Flexible, and Successful Leader

Join Linda Miller of The Ken Blanchard Companies for a live, online chat today at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time.  Miller, Global Liaison for Coaching at The Ken Blanchard Companies and a Master Certified Coach, will be answering questions immediately after her webinar on Essential Coaching Skills for Managers. 

To participate in the online discussion, stop by our sister blog www.thecoachingsource.com beginning at 10:05 a.m. Pacific Time. Try to arrive early because it may be crowded–over 1,900 people have registered for the event!