The Metiss Group's Blog

This is the time of year we celebrate school graduations.  All students embark on their studies with the expectation that some day they will be moving on to another life experience.  In some way, your direct reports have the same expectation.  How prepared are you for your direct report’s “graduation?”

One of the best practices for preparing for the departure of a direct report is to cross-train other team members on key job functions.  Delegate the identification, documentation, and training of these important activities to your direct reports. Challenge them to implement effective backup procedures and test how well they work when they are on vacation.

Empower your direct reports to cross-train each other and your group will still be successful when a key member “graduates.”

A recent study by team of scholars from London School of Economics and Harvard Business School analyzed the day-to-day schedules of more than 500 CEOs from around the world and found executives spent roughly 18 hours of a 55-hour workweek in meetings (33%).  The more direct reports a CEO had the more, and longer, internal meetings they had.

Given all the constraints on a leader’s time, it is understandable how some meetings get rescheduled in favor of higher priority, more important time commitments.  However, the one meeting leaders should not reschedule is the performance review or succession planning meeting with their direct report.  Direct reports see their performance review or succession planning meeting as a significant event often fretting over the meeting for weeks.  Many direct reports lose sleep the night before and are distracted and ineffective at work before the meeting, even when it is a meeting they anticipate will be extremely positive. Unfortunately, some leaders see this important/not urgent meeting as movable not realizing the disappointment it causes their direct report.

When planning these crucial meetings leaders should choose times and days of the week they are less likely to have to reschedule.  Monday mornings and Friday afternoons often work best.

Empower your leaders not to reschedule performance review or succession planning meetings, and you’ll have a more successful organization.

Wikipedia defines reverse psychology as “a technique involving the advocacy of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what actually is desired: the opposite of what is suggested.”

Parents use reverse psychology on their children as a playful yet effective means to get them to do what they want.  Leaders can apply this approach as well.  According to Humetrics Hiring Hints newsletter, here are ways to guarantee that your best people will quit:

• Treat everyone equally. This may sound good, but your employees are not equal. Some are worth more because they produce more results. The key is not to treat them equally, it is to treat them all fairly.
• Tolerate mediocrity. A-players don’t have to or want to play with a bunch of C-players.
• Have dumb rules. Great employees want to have guidelines and direction, but they don’t want to have rules that get in the way of doing their jobs or that conflict with the values the company says are important.
• Don’t recognize outstanding performance and contributions. Behavior you want repeated needs to be rewarded immediately.
• Don’t have any fun at work. Find ways to make work and/or the work environment more relaxed and fun and you will have happy employees who look forward to coming to work each day.
• Don’t keep your people informed. You’ve got to communicate not only the good, but also the bad and the ugly. If you don’t tell them, the rumor mill will.
• Micromanage. Tell them what you want done and how you want it done and get out of the way. Ask for their input on how it could be done better.
• Don’t develop an employee retention strategy. Employee retention deserves your attention every day. Make a list of the people you don’t want to lose and, next to each name, write down what you are doing or will do to ensure that person stays engaged and on board.
• Don’t give feedback. Employees want and deserve feedback.  On the spot feedback, weekly one-on-ones, and quarterly performance reviews all help employees accelerate performance.

Be creative when empowering your leaders to accelerate the performance of their direct reports, and you’ll experience more success.

You are probably familiar with the Chinese proverb: “Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”  As a leader, you should be challenging your direct reports to always be growing.

If you are not already doing so, empower your direct reports to chair your team’s weekly staff meetings.  This popular empowerment technique achieves many purposes.  First, it develops your direct reports to run effective meetings.  Second, it saves you time as you are no longer responsible for meeting preparation and follow-up.  Finally, you become more productive in the meetings focusing on the content and less on the process.

Empower and encourage your direct reports to always be growing and success will surly come.

If your administrative assistant prepared for the perfect meeting, yet the meeting did not go well, was s/he successful?  If the operations department increased productivity by 25%, yet the company missed it’s sales goal, were they successful?  If the sales department experienced record sales, yet the organization lost money, was that success?

Most people in an organization think of their department, work team, or individual contributions as being their most important focus and measure their success by how well those work units perform. Although the accomplishments of work units are important, at the end of the day, the success of the organization is all that matters. The goals and accomplishments of the whole team must take precedent.  For that to happen leaders must clearly communicate the organization’s goals and objectives and reward everyone when the organization succeeds.

Empower your team to put the organization first and the whole team will experience more success.

Do people dislike Monday morning because they are disappointed the weekend is over or because they dread the week ahead?

There’s not much a leader can do about the disappointment direct reports feel when the weekend is over but they can help make the start of the week less dreadful by helping them understand their job’s priorities.

Use a job accountability matrix to identify the three to five major parts or buckets of the job. Once these accountabilities have been identified, rank them in the order in which you’d like your direct report to think about them at the beginning of the week. Click here to see a sample job accountability matrix.

Helping your directs reports REALLY understand the order of importance of their job accountabilities allows them to focus on what’s important and relieves some of their anxiety over the week ahead.

Empower your direct reports with rank ordered job accountabilities and you’ll experience more success.

Most organizations have core values or some set of guiding principles that determine the ways in which business is conducted.  Some organizations take them seriously, but other distribute core values within the organization with much pomp and circumstance and pay little attention to them thereafter.

One of the best ways to ensure core values are understood, internalized, and lived is to make them a part of the performance review process.  At least quarterly each employee in an organization should be asked to recount specific situations where they have demonstrated EVERY ONE of the organization’s core values.

One organization we worked with scored each employee on a ten point scale each quarter for each of their core values.  The score was determined by: 2 points for knowing of the core value, 2 points for being able to recite the core value verbatim, and 2 points for each of three instances where the core value was documented and demonstrated.  This organization has little problem with their employees living their core values.

Empower your direct reports to be measured by knowing and demonstrating core values and you’ll have a more successful organization.

More and more leaders are realizing their competitive edge lies with their talent.  And with their talent, they realize the greatest opportunity for growth is to develop their critical thinking skills.

Leaders must first create a safe environment for people to make mistakes and to admit thinking errors.  If this isn’t accomplished, people may feel afraid of embarrassment, humiliation, and perhaps even loss of professional status.

Once people feel comfortable explaining their thinking process, the leader can coach them on their critical thinking.  The leader’s first impulse will be to correct the direct report, provide the proper solution, and move on.  Providing the solution and explaining the rationale rarely works to develop cognition; the successful leader will ask questions to encourage the direct report to exercise that brain muscle and develop better critical thinking strength.  Some questions leaders may ask to coach for better critical thinking include:

• “How did you come to that conclusion?”
• “What are the facts that led you to that conclusion?”
• “What other options have you considered?”
• “What would happen next?”
• “Have you considered your bias?”

Empower your direct reports to learn from their mistakes and they will become successful critical thinkers.

Most job descriptions are tucked away in some HR Manager’s dusty cabinet and at best looked at once year or when the position needs to be filled.  If these documents are used, they are likely seen only by one or two people.

Job accountabilities define what is expected out of a job and should be concisely described on one page.  The accountabilities are used regularly by job-holders and their bosses to measure and track success.  Don’t stop there; share the job accountabilities with all people associated with a job.

Sharing job accountabilities lets everyone know what is AND what is not expected of the job.  Co-workers help keep the job-holder accountable and support them in achieving the success factions. Sharing the accountabilities also minimizes the frustration from others who want more of the job-holder than is included in the job.  You’d be surprised how relieved your direct reports are when everyone knows what is expected of them.  Click here to see an example of a job accountabilities report.

Empower your direct reports to share their job accountabilities and they’ll be more successful.