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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Gallup Press
Read between
November 28 - December 4, 2022
The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.
I didn’t try to fix Brad, Susan, Gary and Emma. I didn’t try to make them clones of each other. I tried to create an environment where they were encouraged to be more of who they already were. As long as they didn’t stomp on each other and as long as they satisfied the customers, I didn’t care that they were all so different.
Since you never know what corporate might spring on you next, I recommend living by this simple rule: Make very few promises to your people, and keep them all.
A manager has got to remember that he is on stage every day. His people are watching him. Everything he does, everything he says, and the way he says it, sends off clues to his employees. These clues affect performance. So never forget you are on that stage.
“What do we know to be important but are unable to measure?”
Many companies know that their ability to find and keep talented employees is vital to their sustained success, but they have no way of knowing whether or not they are effective at doing this.
These 12 items don’t capture everything you may want to know about your workplace, but they do capture the most information and the most important information. They measure the core elements needed to attract, focus and keep the most talented employees. Here they are: Q01. I know what is expected of me at work. Q02. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. Q03. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. Q04. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work. Q05. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me
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The employee’s immediate manager directly influences the items most consistently linked to turnover. This tells us that people leave managers, not companies.
It is better to work for a great manager in an old-fashioned company than for a terrible manager in a company offering an enlightened, employee-focused culture.
This metaphorical mountain reveals that the key to building a strong, vibrant workplace lies in meeting employees’ needs at Base Camp and Camp 1. This is where you should focus your time and energy. If your employees’ lower-level needs remain unaddressed, then everything you do for them further along the journey is almost irrelevant. But if you can meet these needs successfully, then the rest — the team building and the innovating — is so much easier.
The stages on the mountain reveal that if the employee doesn’t know what is expected of him as an individual (Base Camp), then you shouldn’t ask him to get excited about playing on a team (Camp 2). If he feels as though he is in the wrong role (Camp 1), don’t pander to him by telling him how important his innovative ideas are to the company’s reengineering efforts (Camp 3). If he doesn’t know what his manager thinks of him as an individual (Camp 1), don’t confuse him by challenging him to become part of the new “learning organization” (Camp 3).
You have to be able to set consistent expectations for all your people, yet at the same time, treat each person differently. You have to be able to make each person feel as though he is in a role that uses his talents while simultaneously challenging him to grow. You have to care about each person, praise each person, and, if necessary, terminate a person you have cared about and praised.
People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough.
If you want “strongly agree” responses to the items “I know what is expected of me at work” and “I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right,” you must be able to set accurate performance expectations.
The catalyst role describes what great managers do. It tells us nothing about how they do
When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes … not the right steps.
Any recurring patterns of behavior that can be productively applied are talents.
Competencies are part skills, part knowledge and part talent. They lump together, haphazardly, some characteristics that can be taught with others that cannot. Consequently, even though designed with clarity in mind, competencies can wind up confusing everybody.
“Habit” is another potentially confusing term. We have been told that our habits are second nature. We have been told that we can all change this nature and acquire new habits. Again, this advice is well-intended but inaccurate. Most habits are our first nature. Most habits are talents.
Take time to study your best, say great managers. Learn the whys, the hows and the whos of your best, and then select for similar talents.
Define the right outcomes and then let each person find his own route toward those outcomes.
At the lowest level, customers expect accuracy. They expect the hotel to give them the room they reserved. They expect their bank statements to reflect their balance accurately. When they eat out, they expect the waiter to serve what they ordered. It doesn’t matter how friendly the employees are; if the company consistently fails the accuracy test, then customers defect.
The next level is availability. Customers expect their preferred hotel chain to offer locations in a variety of different cities. They expect their bank to be open when they can use it and to employ enough tellers to keep the line moving. They expect their favorite restaurant to be nearby, to have adequate parking and to have waiters who notice that distinctive “I need help now” look. Any company that makes itself more accessible will obviously increase the number of customers who are willing to give it a try.
At this level, customers expect partnership. They want you to listen to them, to be responsive to them and to make them feel like they are on the same side of the fence as you.
The most advanced level of customer expectation is advice. Customers feel the closest bond to organizations that have helped them learn. It’s no coincidence, for example, that colleges and schools are blessed with the strongest alumni associations. But this love of learning applies across all businesses. The big public accounting firms now place a special emphasis on teaching their clients something that will help them manage their finances more effectively.
Some employees want you to leave them alone from almost the first moment they are hired. Others feel slighted if you don’t check in with them every day. Some want to be recognized by you, “the boss.” Others see their peers as the truest source of recognition. Some crave their praise on a public stage. Others shun the glare of publicity, valuing only that quiet, private word of thanks. Each employee breathes different psychological oxygen.
Remember the Golden Rule? “Treat people as you would like to be treated.” The best managers break the Golden Rule every day. They would say don’t treat people as you would like to be treated. This presupposes that everyone breathes the same psychological oxygen as you. For example, if you are competitive, everyone must be similarly competitive. If you like to be praised in public, everyone else must too. Everyone must share your hatred of micromanagement.
Investing in your strugglers appears shrewd. Yet the most effective managers do the opposite. When they join the names, their lines are horizontal. They spend the most time with their most productive employees. They invest in their best. Why? Because at heart, they see their role very differently from the way most managers do. Most managers assume that the point of their role is either to control or to instruct. And, yes, if you see control as the core of the manager role, then it would certainly be productive to spend more time with your strugglers because they still need to be controlled.
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They plot how they, as managers, can run interference for each employee, so that each can exercise his or her talents even more freely.
At its simplest, a manager’s job is to encourage people to do more of certain productive behaviors and less of other, unproductive behaviors. Machismo managers have forgotten that their reactions can significantly affect which behaviors are multiplied and which gradually die out.
Therefore, as a manager, if you pay the most attention to your strugglers and ignore your stars, you can inadvertently alter the behaviors of your stars. Guided by your apparent indifference, your stars may start to do less of what made them stars in the first place and more of other kinds of behaviors that might net them some kind of reaction from you, good or bad.
One of the most powerful things you can do after reading this book is to go back and “rehire” your best people — that is, go back and tell them why they are so good. Tell them why they are one of the cornerstones of the team’s success. Choose a style that fits you, and don’t allow the conversation to slip into promises about promotion in the future.
First, they don’t use average performance as the barometer against which each person’s performance is judged. They use excellence. From their perspective, average is irrelevant to excellence. Second, they know that the only people who are ever going to reach excellence are the employees who are already above average. These employees have already shown some natural ability to perform the role. These employees have talent. Counterintuitively, employees who are already performing above average have the greatest room for growth.
As soon as they realize that a weakness is causing the poor performance, they switch their approach. They know that there are only three possible routes to helping someone succeed: Devise a support system. Find a complementary partner. Or find an alternative role.
Great managers do not believe that a productive team has camaraderie as its cornerstone and team members who can play all roles equally well. On the contrary, they define a productive team as one in which each person knows which role he plays best and is cast in that role most of the time.
self-discovery is the driving, guiding force for a healthy career. The energy for a healthy career is generated from discovering the talents that are already there, not from filling oneself up with marketable experiences. Self-discovery is a long process, never fully achieved. Nonetheless, great managers know that it is this search for a full understanding of your talents and nontalents that serves as the source of energy powering your career.
“When someone joins the team, I tell him that one of our major goals in working together is to help him figure out who he is. I tell him to look in the mirror. And if he doesn’t know how to do that, I tell him to use the Sunday night blues test. If he doesn’t feel that little stab of depression on Sunday night — if he actually finds himself looking forward to the week — then he should stop and ask himself, ‘Why?’ What is it about the role that he loves so much?
“If he does feel those Sunday night blues coming on every weekend, then it’s not necessarily his fault. It’s not some failing in him. But he does need to ask the same question, ‘Why?’ What does he need that his current role is not giving him? Again, he should bear his answer in mind as he looks for other places to work.”
This is why creating new heroes, designing graded levels of achievement and establishing broadbanded pay plans are all so important. These techniques provide an environment where money and prestige are spread throughout the organization. Since the employee now knows he can acquire them through a variety of different paths, money and prestige become less of a factor in his decision-making. He is free to choose his path based on his current understanding of his talents and nontalents.
Great managers excel at “holding up the mirror.” They excel at giving performance feedback. Don’t confuse this with the once-a-year performance appraisal chore with its labyrinthine form filling and remedial focus or with the empty, arbitrary employee-of-the-month feedback. The feedback great managers give is quite different.
She describes a program called Excel, where she meets with each of her 22 direct reports once every quarter. “In these meetings, we quickly review the last three months. And then it’s on to the good stuff — the next three months. What are their plans and their goals? What measurements will we use? With each of them, we talk about what they enjoy doing and how we can structure things so that they get to do more of that.”
“I have 16 direct reports, and with each of them, I probably spend about 20 minutes each week talking about their performance, the project they are working on, how they can improve and what I can do to help.
if you use a trial period, then, like Ellen, you must be very clear about the details. How long will it last? What criteria will you use to assess fit? How often, if at all, will you meet during the trial period to discuss performance? Where will the employee go if she does not stay in the new role? You must answer all of these questions explicitly if the trial period is to be a success.
you must make it clear that the employee will be moved back into his previous role if either you or he is unhappy with the fit. This will prevent any unfortunate misunderstandings. The trial period is not just for his benefit; it is also for yours. If, after the trial period is over, he loves the role but you perceive a misfit, your assessment wins. He may not be happy with this, but at least he will not feel ambushed.
When an employee is obviously miscast, great managers hold up the mirror. They encourage the employee to use this misstep to learn a little more about his unique combination of talents and nontalents. They use language like “This isn’t a fit for you. Let’s talk about why” or “You need to find a role that plays more to your natural talents. What do you think that role might be?” They use this language not because it is polite, not because it softens the bad news, but because it is true.
Every great manager has his or her own style. But every great manager shares the same goal: to turn each employee’s talent into performance. The Four Keys — select for talent, define the right outcomes, focus on strengths and find the right fit — reveal how they attack this goal.
Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. Therefore, questions like “Tell me about a time when you …” can serve you well. But be careful with these “Tell me about a time” questions. First, you should always be listening for a specific example. And by specific, we mean specific by time, by person or by event.
Regardless of the detail the candidate eventually provided, if she needed two or three probes to describe a specific example, then chances are that the behavior in question is not a recurring part of her life. When you ask “Tell me about a time” questions, don’t judge the response on the quality of its detail. If you do, you will end up evaluating whether the person is articulate or whether the person has a good memory, rather than whether he or she has the particular recurring talent you want. Instead, judge the response on whether it was specific and top of mind.
A person’s sources of satisfaction are clues to his talent. So ask him what his greatest personal satisfaction is. Ask him what kinds of situations give him strength. Ask him what he finds fulfilling. His answers will help you know what he will be able to keep doing week after week.
At the beginning of each year, or a week or two after the person has been hired, spend about an hour with him asking the following 10 questions: 1. What did you enjoy most about your previous work experience? What brought you here? (If an existing employee) What keeps you here? 2. What do you think your strengths are? (skills, knowledge, talent) 3. What about your weaknesses? 4. What are your goals for your current role? (Ask for scores and timelines) 5. How often would you like to meet with me to discuss your progress? Are you the kind of person who will tell me how you are feeling, or will I
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