Beyond Leadership is Horizon Point’s line of resources for managers of people. Managing ourselves is a distinct set of behaviors from managers the work of others, and we are here to help. Read stories in this category if you are ready to take the next step into people leadership (or if you’re looking for articles to send someone else…).
Related Blog Posts:
Leaders, Know the Skill and Will of Those You Lead
Tell ?Show ? Do: Leading when Someone has High Will and Low Skill
Find Another Seat (or Challenge) or Get Off the Bus? How to Lead when Skill is High but Will is Low
A Final Thought on Leading for Skill and Will: It’s a Long Term Game, Not a Short One
I’m on a plane with my third-grade son, traveling to Washington D.C. He is taking a math test beside me. We are headed up to our nation’s capital for a work conference I have, and he and my dad are along for the ride.
He’s coming to actually see some of the things he’s been learning in school about government and democracy. With the trip being counted as a “field trip” for him instead of an absence, the schoolwork, including tests he’s missing, come with us. He is to complete them and return them for grading the Monday after we arrive home.
He finishes and says, “Don’t check it, mom, that is Mrs. Armstrong’s (his teacher) job.”
It’s like he knows I have the temptation to “check it” and justify “helping” him, which he knows is straight-up cheating. I resist the urge to check it and put it away. Later I do check it, though. He’s missed one. And I again resist the urge to give it back to him and tell him, not the answer, but “Hey, why don’t you look at this one again?” Still straight up cheating, but I’d be dishonest if I acted like the temptation to fix his mistakes and or help him make a perfect score isn’t there.
And this temptation is also present in any leadership situation.
The one he missed is an easy one, one that he just didn’t take his time on. And knowing his biggest struggle in math is not getting the right answer, but taking his time to get the right answer, I silently think about ways to help him take his time without fixing his test so that he gets a 100 next time instead of a 98.
But, I “allow” him to miss one and in the long run, he will be better for it. The perfect score isn’t nearly as important as him learning through doing things on his own and learning the consequences of not taking his time. And of course, most importantly, the hard lessons won in doing things with honesty and integrity learned through a leader modeling that behavior for him. Or wait, he actually modeled this for me first.
As we wrap up our posts on leading through skill and will, I think it warrants a pause in considering leading in the moment for short term gain versus leading for long term outcomes and results. Leading is a marathon, not a sprint.
We practice leading through skill not to satisfy our own short-term needs, nor the short-term needs and desires of those we lead. We practice it because it is a process that fosters learning. Learning that isn’t fleeting, but learning that is lasting and transferable across domains and that builds character.
So the next time you have to diagnose someone’s skill and will and then use that knowledge to lead them, see yourself as their coach and teacher, not their boss (or parent).
Hopefully, the learning will come in the form of not just better skill acquisition and motivation but also with growth that lasts, growth that fosters transferable skills and integrity.
How do you foster long-term learning and growth with those you lead?
We’ve all seen someone there before. We’ve most likely also been there before ourselves. One of the most, if not the most knowledgeable and experienced person in the room. The one that can do the task or assignment with his or her eyes closed. Possibly the smartest person in the room.
But somehow, they are also the most disinterested person in the room. Whether this disengagement comes from boredom or burnout, you can’t be sure, but it is obvious they’d rather be anywhere doing anything other than what they are really good at doing.
You need them to do it, but they don’t want to. They have high skill and little to no will. And interestingly enough, because they have no personal drive to do it well or with excellence, their skill begins to tank.
What do you do? It often comes down to one of two things:
For example, my almost nine-year-old is in the throes of multiplication tables. This semester, he has to demonstrate mastery of all his multiplication facts by completing a test on each fact family and getting them all correct in less than a minute.
He probably could have done this all (except for maybe the nine and twelve fact families) day one. I’m not sure how he learned them all, but I do know he has a natural ability with numbers (he gets it from his daddy) and he often thinks in numbers, not in words.
But, we are required to practice the facts for at least 10 minutes every night and sign off it has been done.
Needless to say, he’s so over it. So, we’ve had to find other ways to challenge him in doing this routine every night. We skipped ahead, doing harder fact families that he wouldn’t be tested on for a few weeks because he had already mastered the ones he was being tested on next. Then we went to challenging him to apply the multiplication he learned by multiplying two digits instead of just one, or we broke it down and showed him how he could divide, which is a concept they hadn’t started yet in school.
We’ve also engaged him in teaching his sister (in kindergarten) basic multiplication facts, which he loves (and she tolerates).
So, we challenged him. And the same is true of what you should do with someone you are leading that has a high skill level but is so over doing what they are doing. Challenge them to take it to the next level by:
But something strange happened. We had been practicing our four and eight fact families and he had mastered them. We went to revisit these facts the night before the test on them just as a brush up on his skills. Well, when simulating the same situation as the test (all thirteen facts listed to answer correctly in less than a minute) he flipped out and said he couldn’t do it. He just froze and it was like all he knew had vanished.
Honestly, I think we had beat a dead horse. He had practiced so much when he really didn’t need to, that he was burned out.
So I told him to go to his room and rest. He didn’t want to, but he did. He came back down about 15 minutes later had made a paper airplane and said he was ready to try again.
He answered all his fours correctly in less than 30 seconds and completed the eights correctly with about fifteen seconds to spare.
He just needed a break. He was burned out. Much like some of your people who are highly skilled are. If you see someone’s will begin to wane on something they are highly competent in doing, first challenge them to take their skill to the next level or give them an assignment to teach someone else to do it. If that doesn’t work, give them a break.
I found myself at this high skill, waning will point not long ago. After a solid spring and half the summer spent facilitating a lot of training that more often than not required travel, I found myself at best bored and at worst burned out. And honestly, I felt like I had gotten worse at it.
I love nothing more than helping other people succeed in leading, but after almost ten years of training and many months training on the same content over and over again, I was kind of over it. had the experience and knowledge to do it well, but I felt myself not doing it very well because I was bored by it and tired of it.
I was also pregnant, so that might have also had something to do with my mood over it all.
A break from travel and work being required with the pending arrival of our child, I had to have a plan. And I had to rest. I took a risk and hired someone else to train. And I am so glad I did.
This brings up a third route for leading others (and yourself) well when your will tanks in high skill areas: divest in it.
I actually have done all three of these things related to my skill and will with group leadership training. I handed off the bulk of it to someone who has a high skill and will for it, I challenged myself by beginning to build new training content using my skills, and I’ve enjoyed teaching our new colleague on the unique way we feel like we add value in our training approach.
What do you do when you or someone you lead is highly skilled but has lost the will to do something or do it well?
Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to lead volunteers as a staff member as well as a chair of an all-volunteer board. It can certainly be a challenge, but it is also a great privilege and offers surprising rewards!
I remember planning an awards event several years ago that went awry. We had more than a dozen people show up that did not RSVP. My first thoughts were: where will we seat them & will there be enough food? As I look back, I am so thankful for the volunteers who jumped in to help. That was one of the first times I truly thought about the importance of volunteers and the impact of leading others.
These 3 quotes are some of my favorites and certainly ring true for leading volunteers.
If you are leading a group of volunteers and have the opportunity to help select them, remember this quote. Look for individuals that are willing to share their unique talents and gifts, but who also share similar values and believe in the mission and vision of your group.
Always, always, always appreciate others! A simple thank you gift, note or text can go a long way. Since volunteers don’t receive a paycheck, showing your gratitude can have a major impact.
Great leaders, regardless of who they are leading, should have a servant’s heart. I’ve had the opportunity to serve alongside some amazing servant leaders and can only hope I reflect a servant’s heart while leading volunteers.
Where can you volunteer today?
I watched my friend resist the urge to buckle her toddler into her stroller. She could have done it well and much quicker than her little one, but she took a deep breath and said, “Ok, you buckle yourself in just like I showed you.” The precious little girl smiled up at her and said, “Okay mommy!” with pure joy.
The same was true with my five-year-old who has wanted so badly to put her hair up in a ponytail holder by herself. I walked out to the car the other day and she beamed with pride. While waiting for me to load her little brother into his car seat, she had put a piece of her hair up with a ponytail holder. It stuck out the side of her head in an extremely awkward way but she had done it all by herself, and she was proud.
Both of these sweet little girls had a high will to perform the task at hand. They wanted to learn and express their ability to do a task with independence.
Many people you lead maybe like the young child who has a high desire to do the job and do it well but needs help developing the skills to do the job to the standard or pace needed to do it successfully and that takes practice.
You’re going to have to take a deep breath, be patient, and tolerate a few crooked ponytails before it is done at the speed and standard you want, but it is well worth it in order to maintain the high level of pre and post effort/will.
Trying to take over or just doing it yourself will kill the will, but being too passive and not providing enough direction will kill it too.
The model for leadership when someone’s skill level is low but will is high is to teach through an approach that first tells them how to do something; then shows them how to do it; then allows them to do it on their own first with you observing; and then moving to doing it totally independently.
Tell ? Show ? Do.
For example, someone I work with had a high desire to begin facilitating one-on-one leadership coaching sessions. She hadn’t ever done it before but did have transferrable skills in working one-on-one with students and adults facilitating career coaching. She is really good at working with people one-on-one and has a high desire to do this well as it is one of the primary ways she lives out her professional mission statement to make people better through her influence.
But she was nervous about the content which was novel to her and the method, also novel to her.
So we employed Tell ? Show ? Do.
I walked her through the content, method, and tools verbally. She asked questions and we discussed nuances that might be necessary to consider given the person she was coaching and their needs and environment. It’s important to note that when someone has a lower level of skill, having tools they can use to help them is a huge help. Instead of telling them, “Oh, just do it this way” you instead give them tools they can also actively deploy as they learn and get better at doing.
Next, she watched me facilitate about half a dozen sessions utilizing the method and the tool. We discussed/debriefed after each session, and you could tell she was gaining confidence through observing it being done in real-time with real situations.
Finally, we switched roles and she facilitated about half a dozen sessions while I watched her do it and gave her feedback after each session.
Now, she does these sessions on her own and she just finished employing the Tell ? Show ? Do model to teach another colleague of ours how to do the same thing.
It’s really exciting to see how using this method can be used over and over again to help people learn and grow both as the person learning through and as the person teaching it.
Pretty soon, my five-year-old will be teaching me new tricks about how to put my hair up and my friend’s little girl will be teaching her doll how to buckle up in the stroller. Teaching a skill when mastery is accomplished helps to continue to drive will in us all.
How do you build up a person’s skill level when they have a high will to do a job with excellence?
Note: Sometimes you can misdiagnosis a low skill level when in fact the issue is not skill-based but confidence based. Be attuned to distinguishing the ability to do with confidence to do it. For more thoughts on this, read this.