Dr. Steve O. Steff, President, Transforming Leadership.
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My firm had been asked by Tim, the vice president of human resources for a large corporation, to develop a management skills program for plant managers. With over 8,000 employees in 24 states, the company was struggling with widely fluctuating numbers for both production and turnover. Their plant in Austin, Texas, was doing a terrific job in both categories. Meanwhile, they had had three different plant managers over the past four years at the plant in Athens, Georgia, and the plant still had such chronically poor numbers they were considering closing the plant. The remaining 12 plants fell somewhere in between but unfortunately tended to lean toward the low end of the scale.
The vice president had decided that if we could identify exactly what the Austin manager was doing “right” and teach it to the other managers, it should solve the problem. The low-performing managers simply did not “know” the right things to do.
Tim was surprised when we submitted our proposal within a week of his request. He had anticipated the proposal would require an extensive study of the processes and procedures in Austin, and he was not expecting a response from us for several weeks.
Here's what I told him: “Tim, based on our discussion of your situation, we have put together what we believe to be your best solution. As we go over this proposal, keep in mind that what you and I discussed was looking for a solution. You specifically requested a workshop, and we believe a workshop is a great component of the solution, but please know that a workshop alone will not fix this issue. Actually, you will notice our proposal includes three different options but that a stand-alone workshop is not offered. We feel so strongly about the ineffectiveness of workshops that we have stopped offering them, even when requested.”
The challenge Tim is facing is common regardless of the industry. Some departments invariably perform better than others; one location outperforms the rest. For years the answer to this was to conduct a workshop or hold a class or two.
Tim commented that his low-performing managers didn’t “know” the right things to do. Do your leaders know the best practices for managing and leading? Workshops and classes are very effective at imparting “knowledge” — that is, ensuring that everyone is exposed to the best practices and understands the logic for doing this and not doing that.
But knowing best practices and doing best practices are two different things.
Tim explained his desire for a workshop: “I have been doing this a long time, and I know every one of these plant managers. A few of them drive me a bit batty at times. They absolutely know manufacturing, but they just do not possess the management or leadership skills to develop their team. I believe if we can just do a first-class workshop and introduce them to top management skills, and let them know what is expected of them, that will get us where we need to go.”
In response, I let him know that I believed all of his plant managers needed to go through leader-manager training. This would expose them to a specific set of high-performance skills and drive home the benefits and needs for practicing these skills. But our experience is that the vast majority of people in a workshop, even the best workshops, hear “the truth” but then go back to their jobs and continue to do exactly what they were doing before. That is, their behaviors — and leadership is about behaviors — don’t change, even though they have heard about other, more effective behaviors.
Tim considered the challenges he has had changing some of his own behaviors. “Okay,” he said. “I’m convinced that a workshop is not going to change them all into high-performing leaders. So what is the answer?”
I encouraged him to stick with the workshop as a component of his development process. The workshop would expose all of his leaders to the appropriate skills and behaviors, and it would prepare all of the leaders to see and expect change. But then it would be important to identify some number of plant managers that he would consider “high potential” and include them in a coaching program that would build in the skills of the workshop.
Behavior change almost always requires some level of accountability, and coaching provides that accountability. Additionally, a good coach can help your team identify why they are performing, or behaving, the way they are now and help them remove some of the barriers to change.
Coaching will help managers identify a specific behavior they want to integrate and will then help them develop a routine for practicing that behavior, over and over, until it becomes a habit.
Repeated good leadership behaviors result in a “habitual high-performance leader.” It’s not just the knowledge; it is building the behavioral habits that result in change.
Leaders are not born; they are made. High-performing leaders have identified effective leadership behaviors and repeated those behaviors over and over (and over) until they became habits. We rarely change behavior simply as a result of learning something different.
Best practices to consider:
• Identify effective leadership behaviors, and identify current ineffective (or destructive) behaviors.
• Ensure that your participants are willing and open to new ideas and behaviors.
• Formulate a plan for replacing existing ineffective habits with the new, more effective behavior.
• Establish an accountability network for each participant. This could be an internal or external coach or a supervisor. In the absence of this accountability, our human tendency is to revert to our old, established behavior, particularly as outside pressures rise.
• Establish leadership metrics and make these metrics part of your regular reporting. My firm regularly conducts engagement surveys at the beginning of an engagement. This provides us with a benchmark with which to measure our improvement as a result of the training and coaching.
Workshops and classes do not change behavior. Behavior change is a result of practice, practice, practice — and accountability.
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