Sustainable Transformation

What's the difference between the game of checkers and the game of chess? The obvious answer to many of us is that chess is more complicated, right? Not so fast...look more closely and you realize there's more to it than that, which might explain how the game of chess is similar to sustaining high performance. In checkers all of the pieces move in the same way. In chess the pieces all move differently. Marcus Buckingham, in his book The One Thing you Need to Know, reminds us that great leaders understand their individual people and encourage them to leverage their strengths. By leveraging their strengths, organizational excellence occurs.

To some of us, we might want to suggest performance excellence is more like the game of checkers because we've heard the advice that we need everyone moving in the same direction in order to accomplish organizational success. In order to move people in the same direction, we try motivate the employees with the same techniques. But this will only accomplish average performance. Sure we can apply the same motivation or the same incentives but it will only work to a certain point. Great leaders, on the other hand, discover each employee's uniqueness and capitalize on it. So how do great leaders make this happen? Here are four skills from the research that reminds us what great leaders do on a regular basis.

Select good people
Define clear expectations
Praise often, predictably, and immediately
Show they care

Selecting good people has been a mantra lately but it bears repeating. Hiring a good employee takes more time than hiring the "convenient" employee. Many managers claim they don't have time to hire because they have the opening now and can't wait. The irony in the "I don't have the time" approach is that it catches up to you in the end because of all the challenges presented with a miss-hire. Rather than taking the time to hire the right employee, managers will be spending their time trying to "change" the employee into the type of employee the manager wanted in the first place. Guess what, though, it's almost impossible to change a bad hire into an excellent hire.  The bottom line is hire the person for who they are and forget about trying to change him/her.

Almost every manager might claim that he/she has clear expectations for his/her employees. Unfortunately, though, research shows that less than 50% of the employees today have clear expectations. Some might rationalize this by the fast pace of change but that doesn't count. If that was the reason, we wouldn't find any performance excellence because everyone is living in a fast-paced world. Yet, we can find performance excellence all over the place because we find leaders who communicate clear expectations by meeting with their people often. Great leaders don't set goals once or twice a year, they do it multiple times a year.

The third basic skill observed by great leaders is praising their employees. Great leaders understand consequences make the difference. The worst kind of consequence is one that is uncertain, in the future, and focused on the negative. On the other hand, the best kind of consequence is recognizing positive behaviors with immediate praise.   Sustainable excellence, therefore, is rarely a one-time achievement but rather a result of repeated, incremental improvements. Great leaders notice the improvement and celebrate them. This frequent celebration encourages repeated positive performance.

The fourth and final skill recognized by great leaders is caring for their employees. I suspect some people might roll their eyes because this is one of those "warm and fuzzies" that's hard to quantify in organizations.    For those of you in that view, here's something to help you understand the quantifiable nature of "caring." Research draws a STRONG link that employees who feel cared about at work are...