With the responsibilities of a leadership position always comes the difficult task of managing productivity. Ultimately leadership without management is a strategic nightmare, whilst management without leadership is a thankless and soul-destroying bureaucracy. The way I like to describe the difference, in the simplest terms, is to say that leadership deals with and shares the why; why are we going to do what we are, why are we looking to change what we will and why is it we are going to give it our all. Whereas management is all about the who, the what, the where, the when and the how. Management is about the logical steps and the tasks which are going to be assigned and undertaken, it is the strategic processes which must be put in place.
The issue we often find is that people and organisations like to separate the two, giving job titles with leadership or management within, ignoring that each position requires a mix of both, and they need to lean on each. Some organisations even train the management side, seeing strategic thinking as the route to success and productivity, while forgetting that it is people who are carrying out the work and therefore without the human, relationship, touch of leadership the workplace would not be an enjoyable and therefore productive place.
However, a cornerstone of all relationships is trust. Something which ultimately must be bestowed onto your teams without question at the start of a relationship, whilst earned from Leaders by their teams. One of the major challenges here is when trust is challenged or lost due to not meeting a target, deadline or other agreed expectation without a valid and explainable reason.
When this occurs, your role as a leader (not a manager) comes in to play. It is important here to remember that there is a person on the other side and we ultimately do not know the entirety of the circumstances surrounding the events at work. Although we may feel that external circumstances should not impact on performance and that “targets set should be targets met” we must remember the human side of work and lead as opposed to manage.
So How Do We Achieve This?
First and foremost, we must remember our choice of language and the psychological impact of this. The most prominent thing to do is to ensure we use the word “I” as opposed to “you”. The word “you” is taken as an accusation, it points the comments and the blame fully on the other party, whilst remaining in the “I” takes ownership ourselves, provides support and allows us to accept some of the responsibility which provides psychological safety and retains trust within the eyes of our team.
Our role here, during these difficult conversations, is to provide a safe space for honesty and to ensure we provide a forward-looking direction for the conversation. We are not there to tear down our team member, to make them fear the workplace or to become an enemy. As a leader we must provide an environment of growth, development, and psychological safety. We are there to be an advocate for our team members, to protect them when it is needed and to gain and maintain buy-in.
Ultimately, we as a leader win when the team wins, our job is to ensure the team feels the wins, celebrates them, and uses them as motivation, while learning from failures. This is known as “failing forwards”.
The Discussion Framework
The discussion is going to follow a coaching style of conversation, lead by you by facilitating the safe space focused on progress and moving forwards. Although they may have lost your trust, we are not there to point fingers or lay blame; we own it and we ensure they know we are on their side.
1. Their Perception: We ask what they experienced of the project; their honest feedback on what happened in their eyes. Through this we are seeking feedback on their experience against their expectations. We must ensure we are asking; “what did you need more of from me and what could you have had less of from me?”
In doing this we are ensuring their focus is on the events, themselves as well as you. We are not making them feel they have to own up to anything or take the blame for the failure. By being open ourselves to criticism, and by taking the feedback well, we are modelling self awareness and as such they are more likely to also meet you in the middle with the blame.
2. Moving Forwards: We now take the conversation from the past and into the present, but forward facing. With a future facing direction we ensure we are moving together as a partnership into the future, which is more successful and where we are better versions of ourselves.
- Ownership: Here we lead this section of the conversation by asking them what they need from us moving forward, to ensure they can be the best they can be. This is showing and demonstrating a willingness to change and adapt our leadership approach (within reason).
- Shared Ownership: Here we turn the direction towards them, in a constructive way. We now say to them “in order to make these changes to my leadership approach, I would need you to …”. here we are laying out what we already needed from them which caused the loss of trust in the first instance.
By doing it this way we have gained a better understanding of how we can best lead the members of our team. We have also been able to provide clarity as to how they can meet expectations and rebuild any trust lost.
3. Agreed Actions: Here it is important to reiterate the actions which you will both be taking forwards. This provides a verbal agreement and a level of mutual accountability. By doing this we have established that we are working together, taking responsibility to move forwards together towards an improved, shared future.
4. A Time Frame: It is important not to be ‘wishy-washy’ with the previous step. Our agreed Actions must be achievable and be able to be seen to be being implemented by each other. Alongside this, we therefore must establish a timeframes; this could be a deadline or it could and should be another meeting to check in on the progress being made.
I would recommend here that regular meeting slots should be set for the foreseeable future, as a means for encouraging progress and growth together and ensuring a secure and trusting relationship is built and maintained.
5. Take-Aways: Before we close the meeting and draw it to an end, we must narrow down and focus. We should always look for all coaching style conversations to do this; we started by opening up the conversation to allow them to “right-size” the problems.
We then moved through the conversation by maintaining focus on the steps to make progress around the problems and keeping a future focus, before starting to draw to a close; “what are we each doing to move forwards?”.
However, here we need to ensure we are both on the same page, as such we should ask them; “what are the main take-aways from this meeting?”. We create the space to check-in on how they experienced the discussion, we must never assume they took the same things from the meeting as we did, so we must establish what they did take so we can hold each other accountable to the shared expectations.
Christopher Waters
Founder of LAMDA Solutions