On Managerial Courage
All well run companies aspire to pay, reward, and promote for performance. Most have it prominently stated in their mission/vision statements. They want to provide merit increases, bonuses, and promotion to the people who deserve them, i.e., those that perform the best and have the best potential.
 
All well run companies have evaluation and appraisal philosophies, forms, systems and processes designed to pay for performance. They conduct annual performance appraisals. They have bonus and incentive evaluations. And they have career and succession planningand management development systems.
 
All these processes are designed to facilitate paying for performance. All these systems work when individual managers making the basic appraisals "tell it like it is" and "call 'em the way they really see 'em". All the processes work and lead to appropriately rewarding for performance after an accurate call on performance or potential has been made.
 
Often, however, even some of the best-run companies don't actually pay for performance because individual managers don't use the full range of the rating and evaluation scales. They seem unwilling to rate people truthfully for a very human reason. It's tough and disruptive! Most managers don't like to deliver negative news. Most don't look forward to tough and timely discussions about performance. Most don't look forward to awarding low or zero merit increases to lower end performers. It's generally not because they don't know how to assess performance and potential.
 
For lower performing employees managers don't want to create bad feelings. They want to avoid disruption in the boss/employee relationship and gaps in getting out the work. They want to be able to manage the timing of events so they delay delivering bad news. All very human.  All very unfortunate.
 
The problem with that natural human tendency to give lower performers higher ratings than they deserve and better news than is true is that it doesn't leave enough money and rewards for the higher performing employees. The rating distributions are very narrow. The difference between the high and low merit percentages are slight. Too many people get positive or better ratings than they should. Too many people have the impression they're doing alright. The result is that lower performing employees generally don't know their true position relative to others and the high performers don't think they get adequately rewarded for performance.
 
Most employee attitude and leadership skill surveys have items about how employees feel about the amount, timeliness and quality of feedback they're getting and how they feel about their supervisor's interest in their development, training, and careers. These items are usually rated low. In our work with scores of companies participating in 360° leadership feedback we find that encouraging and accepting constructive criticism, giving consistently fair performance feedback, dealing effectively with performance problems and giving developmental performance feedback in a timely manner are consistently among the manager's lowest scoring items.
 
In the all too common scenario above, everybody loses. What's really fair? What's the right thing to do? What do employees want? What do employees deserve? How can we truly pay, reward, and promote for performance? What serves the organization, managers and employees best? Most managers and employees know the answer. It's telling the truth. It's being open, honest, direct and timely. Employees deserve the truth so they can work on their issues and problems, have more control over what happens to them, and plan their destinies. Employees deserve to know where they stand.
 
Too often managers delude themselves by thinking that smoothing over negative data or delaying bad news will help the employee who's having problems. It's just not true. Telling the truth is the most benevolent course. The truth allows employees to make choices and take action. They can choose to correct their flaws, ask for help, or move to other jobs that fit them better. They can choose to leave the organization. They can have reasonable control over what happens to them. The earlier people know, the greater the chance they can do something about their problems.
 
Here's the bottom line. It is a prime responsibility of each manager to have the managerial courage to step up to the plate and tell the truth. To call performance and potential as they really see it. To give constructive and accurate feedback on a timely basis. And ultimately to pay, reward and promote for true performance. Only honest evaluation, compassionately delivered, helps employees and the organization. Managerial courage requires differentiating between the most and the least. It requires the full truth and nothing but the truth.

Do No Harm: Avoid the Top Team Destroyers
Destroying or sabotaging a team is infinitely easier than nurturing and strengthening teams, notes the Center for Creative Leadership's Robert Ginnett. "Just ask around. Some leaders have a personal theory about how to create teamwork, but almost all leaders can cite an example of how to destroy a team."

Among the reasons commonly cited for teams falling apart are: lack of a clear vision or goal; too many 'yes-people' on the team; leaders who reject the input of team members; leaders who want to do everything; hidden agendas; apathy; communication failures; and inability to learn from mistakes and successes.

According to Ginnett, all these reasons (and more) can contribute to teams being ineffective at best and destructive at worst.  And there are three main ways a team leader can destroy a team: falling off the authority balance beam, calling people a team but treating them like individuals, and assuming members are competent in a team setting.

Fall off the authority balance beam
"Few leadership decisions are more consequential for the long-term well-being of teams than those that address how authority is appropriated between leaders and teams," says Ginnett. He explains that leaders make a range of mistakes: giving away too much authority, hoarding authority, and swinging back and forth from giving and taking away.

There are no simple rules for finding the appropriate balance. "It takes skill to accomplish this well, and it is a skill that has emotional, behavioral and cognitive components," Ginnett explains, adding, "Research shows that effective leaders use much of the continuum of the authority dimension without upsetting the balance – an ability that is developed over time and with experience."

Call people a team but treat them like individuals
When people are told they are a team but are treated as a group of individual performers with their own specific jobs to do, mixed signals are sent, confusion is created, and in the long run, these individuals will not become an effective team.

"To reap the benefits of teamwork, one must build an actual team," says Ginnett. "Calling a set of people a team or exhorting them to work together is insufficient." Instead, action must be taken to establish the team's boundaries, to define the task as one for which members are collectively responsible and accountable and to give members the authority to manage both the team's internal processes and its relations with external entities such as clients and co-workers.

Assume that members are competent in a team setting
Once a team is launched and operating under its own steam, leaders sometimes assume their work is done. "Just as micro-managing causes damage, a pure hands-off style also can limit a team's effectiveness, particularly when members are not already skilled and experienced in teamwork," Ginnett comments. "It is not wise to assume that employees who are part of team due to their experience or technical expertise also have the skills to work in a team environment."

Ginnett recommends initial team training to guide the members on issues such as establishing processes and "norms," identifying roles and responsibilities, dealing with conflict and so on. But teams also need ongoing maintenance and development. As a group and as individuals, teams need guidance as the context of work changes over time and as the team itself evolves.

This article is adapted from Cultivating Teams, Robert C. Ginnett

Just for Fun
You know you have been in the corporate world too long when …

• You ask the waiter what the restaurant's core competencies are.
• You decide to re-org your family into a "team-based organization.
• You refer to dating as test marketing. You can spell "paradigm."
• You actually know what a paradigm is.
• You understand your airline's fare structure.
• You write executive summaries on your love letters.
• Your Valentine's Day cards have bullet points.
• You think that it's actually efficient to write a ten-page presentation with six other people you don't know.
• You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performance review.
• You believe you never have any problems in your life, just "issues" and "improvement opportunities."
• You calculate your own personal cost of capital.
• You explain to your bank manager you prefer to think of yourself as "highly leveraged" as opposed to "in debt."
• You end every argument by saying, "let's talk about this offline."
• You can explain to somebody the difference between "re-engineering," "down-sizing," "right-sizing," and "firing people's butts."
• You actually believe your explanation.
• You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.
• You refer to your previous life as "my sunk cost."
• You refer to your significant other as "my co-CEO."
• You like both types of sandwiches: ham and turkey.
• You start to feel sorry for Dilbert's boss.
• You believe the best tables and graphs take an hour to comprehend.
• You account for your tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.
• You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.
• At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity.
• Your "deliverable" for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.
• You use the term "value-added" without falling down laughing.
• You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a whiteboard and Internet connection.
• You give constructive feedback to your dog.
  

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