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Reports : Raising expectations without leaving people behind
The following text is abstracted from Peter Rogan's December e-Zine and is used with permission. To contact Peter, click here. on behalf of the Future Positive Team. To read more about Future Positive Consulting, click here:
Why do some people differ in their levels of ambition (or self-expectation) and, more importantly, how can this be enhanced?
Often there’s a gap between what a manager expects of someone and what the person expects of him or herself. This can either be a niggling negative feeling the manager has if they suspect that the person is holding back or underperforming. Or it can come from a positive belief that the person has unlocked potential.
Wherever this expectation gap comes from, there is a danger if the manager decides to adopt a dissonant style (as Daniel Goleman called it). Dissonant styles are all about pressure and pushing and giving people the sense that they aren’t doing well enough and need to pull their socks up, get the finger out etc.
The two main dissonant styles are:
- “Commanding” (Telling people what to do and pushing people out of their comfort zone)
- “Pacesetting” (Setting a blistering pace/high standards, expecting everyone to keep up and making people feel inadequate if they can’t)
There are two big dangers. The first is that these styles destroy people’s confidence. They demoralise and demotivate as expectations are raised too far, too fast, making people feel like underperforming failures rather than people with more potential. The second big danger is that in the process mutual trust and respect is damaged. When trust and respect are gone the relationship is broken. When relationships get broken, nothing gets fixed (When relationships are working at least there half a chance of engaging people and making some progress.) This just kills progress and can lead to mutual frustration and resentment.
Peter argues that there is a better "more emotionally intelligent way is to get our empathy working and understand the reasons why people do not perform to (what we perceive is their) potential. He says "when we understanding this we’ll know what the right way to approach the situation is".
He lists a range of the reasons why some people don’t seem to be reaching their potential:
- Lack of awareness – they have no real sense of their own potential (this is probably the majority of people)
- Lack of self-belief, they have no vision of themselves as a doing any better than they are now (this also covers the majority)
- Lack of confidence to try new things (again, this will be true for the majority, even though it’s sometimes covered up with bravado)
- Fear of failure
- Fear of success (that success would just raise expectations that they couldn’t live up to)
- They don’t know how they can develop. They have no road map or proper support.
- Contentment: Some are just very happy doing what they are doing (This might be around 20% of people
- Complacency: Some believe that life will continue steady and cosy and there’s no need to change anything (This might be about 5 or 10% of people)
- Laziness: Some folks just can’t be bothered putting in the effort (This would typically be less than 5% of people)
Peter argues that as managers, the big point hidden in all of this is that to help people raise their expectations of themselves (managers) need to start from where they are, engaging them and creating an upward spiral of vision, action, belief and confidence, creating a positive picture of their potential in their heads, rather than a negative picture of their shortcomings (as perceived).
Peter offers a range of "tools and approaches, and a reliable method for analysing where people are at, and selecting the right approach" in order to help people. They are:
The range of coaching/leadership styles
The skilled coach would have the Commanding and Pacesetting styles in their repertoire. There are some situations where a small amount of this can be useful part of the mix. They would also need the four other styles that Goleman identified:
- Affiliative: Building positive relationships and trust by listening, praise and encouragement
- Democratic: A consultative/consensus building approach by listening, taking feedback, explaining, proposing, discussing/negotiating
- Coaching: Ongoing, performance-focused adult to adult conversations, getting to know people, what drives, motivates and brings the best out of them, linking people’s daily work goals to their long-term goals
- Visionary: Setting out a clear, appealing vision, letting others decide how vision will be realized, empowering people to innovate, experiment and take calculated risks
Peter thinks that "the skilled leader and coach like the skilled Chef will mix and blend the various styles to get the right balance for each unique situation".
A method for selecting the right approach: The Skill vs Will matrix
The skill vs will matrix is a great tool for helping us decide which approach to take. We can gauge where people are on the skill dimension by looking at their:
- Technical skills
- Underpinning knowledge
- Ability to plan own work
- Ability to solve problems
- Ability to take responsibility
- Ability to take decisions
- Ability to stick to timescales
- Ability to work with others
A person’s will can be gauged by their:
- Self-confidence
- Mindset: Problem-focus or solution-focus
- Enthusiasm
- Persistence
- Eagerness to take responsibility
- Desire to learn
- Desire to achieve
- Level of enjoyment, satisfaction
- Trustworthiness when left unsupervised
Peter says "when we have pinpointed the nature and size of the gaps we can pick the appropriate coaching style. For High-will High-Skill people, the advice is to delegate. The Democratic style is likely to predominate, closely followed by Affiliative and Coaching. For High-Skill Low-Will people, a mix of visionary, coaching and democratic. Depending on the reasons for the Will being low, an Affiliative style may be called for to bring confidence and belief, or a small and well-judged amount of commanding and pacesetting to bring some drive and shake any complacency. For High-will Low-Skill people, a Coaching style will predominate, with some Affiliative and Democratic. For Low-Will, Low-Skill people, much will depend on why the person lacks skill and will. Here the coach’s own empathy, self-control and communication skills will be tested as a subtle combination of all six styles may be called for".
What can you do to practice these skills and use these tools effectively?
- Identify someone around you who you believe has more to give than they are currently giving. Make a genuine effort to understand (and not negatively judge) what might be holding them back (see the reasons listed above). If in doubt take a compassionate view (you may yourself be able to relate to things at times in your in your life holding you back from even greater triumphs that you wouldn’t want exposed, judged or criticised).
- Think about "what approach do you need to take to engage with them and start building their confidence and desire and make them more open to taking guidance and trying new things?"
And finally ...
Recommended reading : To find out more about the six leadership styles, you can read “The New Leaders” By Daniel Goleman.
Written by Peter Rogan on behalf of the Future Positive Team: December 2009
©Copyright Future Positive Consulting Limited 2009. All rights reserved.