Leadership Symptoms Analyzed (1)

Editor’s note: This post is inspired by a discussion that happened on the Leader’s Cafe Foundation Forum in LinkedIn. The forum can be found here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=1764277&trk=anet_ug_hm

And the specific discussion can be found here:

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=3686766&gid=1764277&commentID=3976276&trk=view_disc.

Dear Managers and Leaders!

In my previous post, I listed 6 symptoms that leaders should take really seriously. Today and in the next few posts, we will analyze what a leader should do when he notices that these events are happening in his team. Here is the complete list again.

• A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting
• Team members are not coming up with new ideas
• Team members are unwilling to push their boundaries - Mediocrity is the norm, lack of motivation to move beyond their comfort zone
• Team is operating from fear - Lack of transparency, sharing of knowledge, or voicing of opinions. People start saying "yes" instead of questioning your decisions
• No one seems to know what’s urgent and what’s crucial, or at which point we are right now
• Resistance to change

A team member does not produce what the leader was expecting.

You will notice this situation when one of your team members misses a deadline, or when the work is not done to your satisfaction, or when elements are missing from the work that was done. This is a serious situation, but one that is easy to diagnose and correct.

The very first thing that needs to be done is to handle the current situation. If the deadline was missed, you need to correct the course and see what can be done to deliver the task as soon as possible and deal with the impact of being late. If the quality is poor or contents are missing, you also need to deal with that first.

Once you have dealt with the problem at hand, you need to understand the causes of the failure so that you can correct the situation and ensure that it will not be repeated in the future. I would first check with the person whether all the elements of the assignment were well understood (timeline, contents, quality). If they were not, you have to look at your way of delegating tasks to your team members and make sure that you are doing it in a very clear way for your staff. Maybe things are clear to you, but the real goal is to make them clear for your staff. Make sure that when you delegate tasks to your team that these four elements are perfectly clear for the people who will have to perform the delegated tasks:

• Nature of the assignment (what needs to be done)
• Boundaries of the assignment (how much decision-making power is given to the employee)
• Quality expectations (what you expect in terms of quality)
• Timeline (what is the deadline for the assignment or the deadlines if more than one milestone needs to be met)

You also need to make sure that the person you delegate the task to has what it takes to perform the delegated task. Yes you want to stretch people ability to develop their talent but you do not want to set them up for failure!

If you check with the person who did not deliver and every aspect of the delegation was clear to him and yet he failed to deliver, then you have to investigate some more.

• Maybe the person did not have the right skills to be able to accomplish the task properly. If this is the case, it is tough to blame the person except for one thing. He should have told you earlier than on the deadline. You have to make it clear to your team members that people must tell you quickly if they feel they cannot perform a task or will miss a deadline.
• Maybe the task got pre-empted by another one. In that case, you have to make it clear that you need to be consulted prior to switching tasks when there will be an impact on schedule or quality. You do not want to micro-manage your people, but you need to control the impacts on the schedule.
• Maybe the person did not take the task seriously. Although this is a rare event, you need to make sure that there will be a consequence for the employee who did such a thing. You need to make it clear to him (and the rest of the group) that this will not be tolerated and reinforce the importance of what the team does.
• Maybe the timeline was just not realistic in the first place. Once again in that case, I would question the fact that the employee did not tell you ahead of time that he had problems meeting the deadline.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, but I hope it can help you in your search for the root cause of your problem.

On the next post, we will look at the next symptoms.

Until next time,

Remi Cote

PS: If you find these postings interesting and would like to learn more about what I can do for you and your team, then please visit www.innovachron.com or contact me directly at remi@innovachron.com.