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ABOUT THIS SERIES

Welcome to the SCOPE of Leadership book series. The six books in this series are designed to build your knowledge of the thirty-eight competencies of great leaders who lead as coaches. These books provide the insights and principles great leaders as coaches use to practice great leadership—the ability to achieve a desired result through the influence of people who follow and perform by choice.

By reading the SCOPE of Leadership book series, you will learn how to set the example you expect others to follow. You will learn how to coach and develop others, build trust and high-performance teams, and foster collaboration and innovation. You will understand what it takes to motivate and inspire others and discover how to impart ownership and stimulate engagement. You will learn how to develop engaging presentations and speak with confidence. You will understand how to craft win-win partnerships and manage conflict. Most importantly, you will learn how to shape organizational culture, operate with excellence, and deliver exceptional results.

The SCOPE of Leadership is for anyone who aspires to be a great leader. It is for business professionals who want to advance in their career as well as community leaders who want to make a positive impact on society. It is for parents and grandparents who want to be better examples to their children and raise them to be great leaders. It is for athletic coaches who want to help athletes become their best. It is for teachers, principals, church leaders, and others in positions of influence who aspire to influence people positively in order to reach a desired result.

CONTENTS

Introduction

Competency 19: Attracting Top Talent

Competency 20: Knowing the Individual

Competency 21: Coaching

Competency 22: Exhorting and Praising

Competency 23: Enabling Performance

Competency 24: Managing Performance

Competency 25: Imparting Ownership

Appendix:

The SCOPE of Leadership Scorecard for Book 4

About the Author

Books by Mike Hawkins

FIGURES

Figure 4.1: Coaching Approach Flowchart

Figure 4.2: Skill Versus Will Model

Figure 4.3: Levels of Candor

TABLES

Table 4.1: Qualities That Attract Top Performers

Table 4.2: Hiring Profile Attributes

Table 4.3: Interviewing Best Practices

Table 4.4: Elements to Include in a Hiring Interview Guide

Table 4.5: People Characteristics You Should Know

Table 4.6: Characteristics of Competent Coaches

Table 4.7: Benefits Missed When Telling People What to Do

Table 4.8: Thought-Provoking Coaching Questions

Table 4.9: Coaching Best Practices

Table 4.10: Employee Development Activities and Assignments

Table 4.11: Three Levels of Contributions Leaders Should Recognize

Table 4.12: Employee Recognition Best Practices

Table 4.13: Problem-Solving Best Practices

Table 4.14: Performance-Enabling Resource Checklist

Table 4.15: Levels of Enabling Assistance

Table 4.16: Levels of Outsider Assistance

Table 4.17: Measurement and Compensation Plan Elements

Table 4.18: Business and Team Review Meeting Agenda

Table 4.19: Options for Dealing with Poor Performers

Table 4.20: Checklist for Confronting Poor Performers

Table 4.21: Consequences of Performance

Table 4.22: Justifications for Increasing Compensation

Table 4.23: Six Levels of Delegation

Table 4.24: The SCOPE of Leadership Scorecard for Book 4

INTRODUCTION

My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull out some weeds, too.

—Jack Welch

Developing People: Utilizing and improving the capabilities, attitudes, and performance of people.

If we were to meet and I asked you what you do for a living, what would you say? Without looking at your job description or thinking about the question too long, write down what comes to mind. You have sixty seconds.

If you are like the majority of leaders I work with, you said something about producing quality products, gaining market share, increasing revenue and profit, or producing some result related to the domain area for which you are responsible. If you are a leader, however, this isn’t your job. This is the job of your employees. You want them to own this responsibility. Your job is to coach your employees so they perform the work required to deliver these results. As the leader, your job is to ensure people have the skills and resources required to perform the organization’s work. Your job is to develop and enable people.

Studies find that fewer than half of all managers are formally held accountable for developing their people, fewer than half of employees feel strongly that their supervisor cares about them as a person, and fewer than one-third of employees feel strongly that anyone in their organization encourages their development. No wonder there are significant skills shortages in most organizations.

When prioritizing their responsibilities, many managers put operational execution far ahead of people development. Managers expect employees to give their time, effort, and commitment to performing their work with little consideration for their professional development. Ironically, managers then complain that their employees lack the necessary skills to perform their work adequately. Rather than take responsibility and coach their employees, managers blame their organization’s poor performance on their employees and the inability to hire more skilled people at higher salaries.

Part of the problem is a misconception by managers that their own direct contributions are more important than those of their employees. Managers think that the more work they do, the more successful their organization will be. The reality is that the more work their people do, the more successful their organization will be. If managers would redirect their time and resources into coaching and transferring their skills to their team, their team would more than make up for the manager’s reduced level of direct contribution.

Developing others is about turning your attention from your contributions to others’ contributions. It is transferring your skills and knowledge to your team. It is focusing on developing your employees and seeing them as the goal, not the means to the goal. It is seeing people and their development as an investment rather than an expense.

Great leaders make others better. They make developing their people’s skills a top priority. They work through their employees and hold them accountable for doing the organization’s work. They continuously raise the bar of performance and help their employees continuously reach it. As a result, the leader is the head coach and chief enabler, not the chief doer—who so often becomes the chief bottleneck.

There are few activities a manager performs that provide more impact than developing people. A study conducted by Laurie Bassi, co-author of Good Company: Business Success in the Worthiness Era, found that investments in employee skill development had the single largest positive impact on public company stock valuations. Many other studies have also found that developing employee skills is the most value-adding activity a manager can perform, even surpassing the value of hiring people with great skills to begin with.

These results are not the outcome of employees attending mandatory compliance training programs. High-impact employee skill development comes from making investments in learning and coaching that support employees’ self-directed and manager-led developmental initiatives. While there is nothing wrong with most employer-mandated training programs, they don’t fulfill employees’ needs for individualized professional development.

Fortunately, developing others is also one of the most rewarding activities you can perform as a leader. You are not only improving your organization’s performance but also improving people. You are improving people’s careers, lives, and families. You are impacting the individual performance of your employees and the people they will coach in the future. You are making your workplace a better place for future generations, just as those before you did for you.

Another benefit for you when leading as a coach is the learning you receive while developing others. Like a good teacher, you learn as much as your students do. You develop as much as your employees do. Your capabilities and confidence also increase. As your team becomes more successful, you become more successful.

In this level of the SCOPE of Leadership, the focus turns to seven competencies great leaders use in developing, coaching, and enabling others. Great leaders who develop people

Attract top talent.
Know the individual.
Coach.
Exhort and praise.
Enable performance.
Manage performance.
Impart ownership.

If you are like most managers, skill shortcomings hold your organization back. You don’t have enough “A” performers. You need more top talent that can deliver results. You also need to retain the top talent you already have. If this is your situation, why wouldn’t you make investing in and developing your employees your top priority?

When you retire, you won’t be remembered for the profit margins, budgets, and quotas you achieved. You’ll be remembered for your leadership and the people you developed. Those who go on to have great careers because of your leadership will be your most prized memories. Developing people is what produces lasting legacies. Focus on developing people for everyone’s benefit, now and later.

OTHERS:
DEVELOPING PEOPLE