I read this article by Rick Spence in the newspaper this morning about an innovative approach to maximizing customer satisfaction, employee performance and investor support.

It could be your ticket to survive the next slump

By Rick Spence, The Financial PostOctober 5, 2009

This weeks question of the week was submitted by someone through a group on leadership on Linkedin.

How does one implement a participative leadership style when she/he is just new in the position, the relationships and knowledge of the team members have not been developed and business needs to keep moving forward?

Last weeks question and answer from know-yourself expert and author Fritz Glaus has been posted on the Three Brain Synery blog.You can post your answers for others to see here by adding a comment.

I have also posted an audio recording of last weeks tele-seminar conference call on Effective Decision Making using the three brain approach. Here is the link.

This post continues my case study of a client with whom I am coaching on implementing a win-win agreement process with the goal of building a high performance management team. The idea is to provide the support to implement what was learned during the Leadership Styles and Team Development workshops that took place recently. Please refer to my previous posts in this category to see the progression of activities that took place up to now.

I met again with the president last week to finalize our win-win agreement together. This included completing his performance commitment form that I had modified after our last meeting. He needed help writing the personal development goal relative to the tendency of his type that was most important to overcome. In his case the tendency was being to dominant and he realized that it is easy for him to take charge and direct people to do things according to his perspective. He realized that this closed the door for his managers to participate more in the decision making process and to become more autonomous.

We also completed our discussion and agreed on the support performance commitments that he required from me to be successful in his commitments to the process. We also identified how we were to measure progress towards his expectations.

In this system we developed a way to measure each commitment based on a rating scale of 1 to 10. This is prepared by each party before a review session and then there is an exchange to discuss each person’s rating and perspective. This is also where both parties need to practice skills such as active listening and coaching, as well as keeping the others person’s motivation and needs relative to their type in mind.

This week I will conduct a performance review using the aforementioned approach and form and then discuss how to set up the win-win  agreements with his direct reports.

Stephen Goldberg

I just completed delivering a six week leadership workshop on Styles of Leadership and Team Development with a new client in the telecom industry. There were six half-day sessions spread over the six weeks.

I met the owner earlier this year to discuss opportunities to improve the people side of business rather than the processes or systems. Most small business owners are caught up in keeping their sales funnel full and on managing the processes to deliver the goods.

This company is small with about 50 employees in total and most of them working out of the home office in Montreal. There is a sales office in Western Canada and in Europe.

The organization is quite flat in structure with only six people in management roles including the president/owner. Most of the managers had never had any formal training in leadership and had been promoted to these positions as the company grew.

I curently use only one approach to leadership development, the Styles of Leadership & Team Development program developed by Fritz Glaus. I do this because it has contributed to producing the best results for my clients. It is part of a complete approach to help the business owner or CEO free himself from the day to day decisions regarding how the company of organization operates. This allow him to act on new opportunities and use his talents to solidify the organization in whatever way he sees best.

It takes a leader or business owner that is at the point of realizing that greatness is about bringing out the best in people and helping them fully understand and use their qualities to the benefit of all. This then required the leader to start by understanding himself and his direct reports.

The Styles of Leadership and Team Development program incorporates the types of people approach that Fritz Glaus has applied to the training workshops. The program also lay the framework for people to be open to change and continuous personal development. They learn that we all have strengths and weaknesses and this is normal and not to be feared.

During each session over the last six weeks I could see the managers opening up a little more and making attempts to apply what they were learning. Before the third session one of the direct reports of one of the managers participating in the workshops came to me with a big smile and said that she could already see some change from the managers, especially the person she reported to.  She said that they were making a distinct attempt to communicate more often and recognize people’s efforts and contributions.

The program integrates the types of people approach to self-knowledge and understanding of others with the principles of participative management and continuous improvement. Each person identified a key restrainer that interfered with fully using their qualities and set a goal to lessen the impact of this restrainer on their performance.

I met with president a week after the last session and he said that he could see the managers making an effort to apply what they learned. He could see them holding more effective meetings and using the problem solving techniques that were taught.

The next phase of the mandate is to establish win-win performance agreements between the managers and the president. The system we developed has the manager, with our help, formulate a win-win performance commitment with his boss along with support commitments from his boss.

I had the first meeting with the president to begin this process and will submit a new post about that soon.

Stephen

Last week I was speaking with a business owner who told me that one of his short term projects is to hire new talent to replace people who have not lived up to his expectations. He said that the current economic crisis that has caused large employers to reduce their workforce has created opportunities for him to build a better team.

He said that when the job market was hot he could not replace people because he could not find and afford people that would do a better job. Now that more people are out of jobs and ready to work for less than the large employers were paying, he now sees himself in the position to make the moves he wanted to for some time.

Those that are looking to hire to either replace staff or to act on new opportunities must go through a hiring process that will end with a decision of who is the best candidate to choose. This is a process than can be very tricky and is not always easy and never foolproof. And if you are not careful you can make the same hiring mistakes as in the past and end up with no improvement.

Imagine going though the whole hiring process, which can be quite costly and time consuming and then finding out six months later that the new person is no better than the person you replaced. Or your new project opportunity is not getting on track and it is draining your resources because the new hire is not getting up to speed fast enough.

Let’s take a quick moment and review the hiring process to make sure you maximize the opportunities to hire that star performer.

• Aggressively market the position in the right places and with great sales copy that rises above the ordinary. Instead of saying what the job requires, sell the job as a career position that can fulfill someone’s idea of a dream job for their specific talent.
• Have the candidate write you a letter stating why they would be the ideal candidate for the job and how their employment will benefit your firm. Those who really want the job will take the time to do this well and will save you time in qualifying each resume.
• Form a team to conduct interviews and make the hiring decision. That way you have different perspectives and you force yourself to be more objective. Studies show that most hiring decisions are made in the first 5 minutes of an interview but diverse opinions can counter this tendency.
• Take your time but don’t take too long either to make a decision. Invest a good amount of time getting to know the person, not just an hour. You will be spending a lot of time working together so take the time before you commit to know what you’re getting.
• Test and assess your candidates for both technical job skills and for job fit. A technical test could be to ask the person to prepare a balance sheet if the person is applying for a financial role. Be prepared with a test task that is typical for your department or new project.

Assessing the person for total job fit is comprised of matching knowledge and skills, along with attitude and value and as well, thinking style, personality and interests. This can only be determined with any accuracy using assessments.

The The Profile XT from Profiles International measures thinking style, personality in terms of behavioural traits and six occupational interests. It also matches the person’s scores against a customized job profile for the position. This is the most powerful kind of assessment because you are matching someone to the requirements of the job.

On Thursday March 12th at 1:00 PM EST I will be hosting a webinar to present how to hire star performers and make the best hiring decisions using the best resources available today.

Please register for the webinar as space is limited by sending an email to info@optimusperformance.ca. You will receive the log in information. By email.

This webinar is essential if you want to make better hiring decisions and build a high performance team for the future.

Stephen Goldberg
Be Free to Work Less, Earn More, Enjoy Life