Its funny.

Over the last two years that I have been working with this client, I have started to see some changes in his business.

Business metrics improving.

People starting to talk about issues with data and directness. No more political stuff.
People holding people accountable.

This last one is being driven by him and his business team. The Director of Human Resources made a comment to him that he relayed to me.

He explained to me that he told his HR person that he was concerned about the number of people being fired. Yes, he said it. During his short tenure of 25 months, he had to fire three people and he just had two more that came under disciplinary review.

His frustration (or maybe concern) was because he did not want to be seen as a dictator or hatchet person. Now, here is what is interesting. The HR Director’s response.

You are the first person to hold people accountable in the facility. In addition, you are the first person to require documentation of all disciplinary actions. Everything is documented with you. You collect and now have the data.

Do you really think that people did not screw up before? Of course they did. They just were not held accountable. And if they were, documentation was hardly ever used.

So now… these same people are being held accountable. They are given corrective action plans to follow; retraining; and encouragement to succeed. If they choose the correct path, they continue to grow.

If not, they are corrected again. The people that have been corrected more than five times (which is the case for each of the employees released) do not deserve to be an employee of the company.

Have you raised the bar?

Maybe or maybe not. But you are definitely holding people accountable to the standard that has been set.

I smiled as I listened to him.

He knows he is a good leader. His leadership has developed over the last couple years.

The most crucial piece to making this happen… consistency over time.

As a leader, we want our team to succeed.  I got a phone call today from a manager in a panic.

It took me a few minutes to calm him down.  No screaming or yelling, just frustration in his voice.

Here are the basic details.

Last week, he had to give discipline to a worker that had several mistakes over the last year.  This person had basically destroyed 5 production lots of material in four different circumstances.   The cost to the business was pushing close to $50,000.

He sat the individual down and got his side of the story for the most recent incident.  Basically, the employee said ‘I got in a hurry (again) and I screwed up.’  The manager pushed trying to figure out if there was a system problem.  But unfortunately there wasn’t.  It was strictly operator error.

So, it was ultimately decided to give this person a ‘last chance warning’.  In addition, the person would have to go through career counseling to try to figure out what the issue behind these repeated errors were.

After giving the individual off a week with no pay, the employee complied and contacted the career coach.

Two days after his suspension, a repeat failure occurred.  The employee walked to his manager and told him.  I know what I did and I am going home.  Please call me when you decide what you are going to do with me.

So, given that the employee has had a rough year at his home and up to this point, he has been a model employee, what do you do with him?

The manager wanted to know my answer.  I think he was looking for an excuse for not doing what we both knew he had to do.

He told me he did not want to have the hard conversation.  He told me, he could not look into the employee’s eyes without thinking about the negative impact this is going to have on his life.

My comment back to him…

“What about the other 200 employees at the site?  Why are you putting this one above all of them?”

Hard conversations are part of leadership.  We have to be fair to the employee, the business, and yourself all at the same time.

At times, this will hurt.  You are human.

I truly believe that anyone can get what they want in life.

The question is how much do you want to pay? And I am not necessarily implying money in this case.

Do you want to become a millionaire overnight? Go rob a bank and hide the money. You will get to be a millionaire but won’t get to enjoy it for 30 or so years.

Want to be a President of your company someday?

Sure it can happen, but are you willing to play the political game; work the extra hours; work weekends; miss Johnny’s baseball game?

You need to understand your values and what is truly important to you. If you are married, you should do the same thing with your spouse. If you and your spouse’s values are not aligned… then the two of you may have a tough time reaching the goals you have set. Which may lead to a sacrifice on some front.

We have some tools that will help you identify the values that are important to you. Drop me an email or post a comment and I will introduce you to these assessments.

Ultimately, understanding your values will help you develop a solid leadership process improvement plan.

I was recently brought in to help put together a Process Improvement Plan for an employee of a solid people manager. This employee was easy going and well liked however, his performance was not meeting expectations.

Having worked closely with this manager for many years, I was very surprised why he was having trouble putting together the plan and why he asked me to come in.

His basic response was…
I just can not figure this guy out. His lack of performance is actually keeping me awake at night. He knows what needs to be done. I sit down with him on a monthly basis to set priorities and expectations. Yet he still fails to get them done. I just can not believe that he does not see the problem. I am actually scared that he does not see this coming.

So I asked…
What has his performance reviews been like? Have you told him how you felt.

The reply…
I hit him pretty hard during the last performance review. I think I wrote a novel about his ‘misses’. I gave him very concrete examples and very specific expectations for performance. This conversation should not be a surprise to him.

So isn’t this the natural progression - I asked.

Unfortunately it is. He replied.

Last question…
Do you feel that you have been true to yourself and tried everything you could to help the person? And it sounds like you have been honest with him… right?

Yes.

Then there is little choice.

Now imagine in your case, how hard it would be if you had not collected all of the data, all of the conversations, and all of the feedback… it would have been a surprise. Bottom line the person did this to himself.

Help him… but he has to have to will to get it done. This employee has not embraced knowing himself (strengths and weaknesses.)

Sad.

Knowing yourself is the first step in your personal Leadership Development.

True Story…

We had a baby sitter this summer to help out the wife with the three kids. We found the baby sitter via our church. Very nice young lady who loved our children… but still a typical teen-ager!

Anyway, about 3 weeks into the summer, the wife was starting to be disappointed with what the baby sitter was doing. Actually the problem was with what she was not doing. Specifically, my wife felt like she still had to watch after the kids.

When I would get home at night, my wife would be frustrated that she was unable to get anything done in the house during the day because she had to chase the kids around, etc.

I asked her… did you ever tell the baby sitter what you expected. Or that you were not happy with what she was doing?

My wife’s reply was ‘She is a friend of our family. We go to church with her parents. I don’t want to hurt her feelings…’

My wife is one of the most loving, caring, and sensitive people that I know. But I still had to ask the question…

So if you expect her to change and you never tell her that she needs to change…

Why would expect her to change?

Aren’t you doing the same thing in business?

You fear the hard conversation. You don’t tell employees what they do great and what their improvements need to be. You just get by that month of performance reviews, giving everyone an ‘average’ increase.

All because you are scared to hurt their feelings. Or maybe because you are scared with what they will say back… like: You did not give me measurable goals. Or the business changed… or the other business unit did worse then us and they still got a raise.

So now the employee learns that it does not matter what their performance was because they are going to get the same raise anyway.

You may even try to argue (I call it rationalizing) that your compensation system is messed up and you can’t do anything about it.

Try this…
Take your average wage increase (or target)
Multiply this average by prior year’s salary.
You will get a bucket of money.
Now go through and divide this money among your direct reports.
Yep some of them should get zero if they are not performing.
And others should be rewarded.

Use data to make your decisions and send it to corporate.

Force them to see the issue about differentiating performance. You need to recognize that it is about you. Even if you can’t differentiate the performance because of a ‘broken’ compensation system… you still owe to your employee, your business,and to yourself to give an honest appraisal of their work.

And always remember to think about how you should approach the conversation… more to come on this topic in later posts.