Horizon Point Consulting

Category: Performance Management

We provide full service talent management and talent development consulting services. Read our blogs in this category for stories and best practices from real clients and real research on Performance Management.

Leaders, Know the Skill and Will of Those You Lead
I’ve found myself talking about skill and will a lot lately. Whether it be in one-on-one leadership coaching sessions or in group training, the conversation is often directed towards customizing a leadership approach based on the needs of the person being “led”. Much of our basic leadership training modules focus on customization based on personality, but that is only one piece of the puzzle. A person’s level of skill in doing a job or task and a person’s will to do the job or task (which includes aspects of personality) are critical to success.

So what is skill and what is will?

Skill: A person’s ability to do a job or tasks well which comes from him/her having the knowledge, experience and/or raw talent needed to achieve the desired results.

Will: A person’s desire to do a job and do it with excellence which comes as a result of personality and internal motivation. A person being on the right bus (organization) and on the right seat (job) on the bus also impacts a person’s will.

Simply put, skill is the fact that a person has what is needed to do the job well, a person’s will is that the person actually wants to do the job and do it well. Each dimension also breeds and fuels off each other. If you are good at something, you often like it, and if you like to do something you often get good at it.

So many things can go wrong when we mismatch our leadership to a person’s skill and will. This can occur when:
1. We don’t diagnosis someone’s level of skill and/or will correctly.
2. We are so afraid of “micromanaging” that we don’t correctly realize people need guidance at times based on their level of skill.
3. On the opposite extreme, we are so afraid something may go wrong that we do micro-managing, which leads to crushed will when someone who does have the skill needed to do a job is “over led.”
4. We know someone has a certain level of skill and will with one thing so we label them the same level of skill and will for everything. Skill and will can and are variable based on a variety of factors at any given time.
In order to avoid these mistakes, the first thing to do is to correctly diagnosis a person’s skill and will level based on the task or job at hand. You do this by:

1 Simply ask the person where they think their skill/will falls. Most people can give an honest assessment of these levels if you’ve built trust with them. I ask questions like: How do you feel about doing this on your own? Have you ever done this before? What problems do you think you will face or are you concerned about? Do you want to do this? Why or why not? Simply asking questions will help you know where people are.

2. Ask them to walk you through how they would do something/achieve an outcome. Can they articulate steps in achieving an outcome or provide specific examples of when and how they’ve done it or something similar before? If so, their skill level is most likely high. If someone talks in vague generalities about how to do something, they most likely won’t have the maximum level of competence needed to achieve the result. You can also assess their enthusiasm for the task and desire to do it through this exercise. (Note: This is a good interviewing tactic too when hiring to assess for skill and will.)

3. Observe them doing the task/job to assess where they are. Quite simply, if you watch someone do something you can tell if they can do it well or not. You can assess their confidence, skill, and enthusiasm through observation.

4. Debrief after they do something to assess their like for the activity and their desire to do it again. What did they learn and how will they grow to develop further skills based on what they learned? Do they want to do it again or are they bored by it? Oftentimes, when someone reaches a high level of skill, will can begin to diminish because a been there, done that attitude begins to set in. If the person can build on those skills by teaching others the skill(s) and or adding the next level of complexity to the task/job, you can continue to maintain will and interest.

Once you’ve diagnosed someone’s level of skill and will, it is then time to put these two pieces together to determine how you should best lead the person.

Giving examples of how to lead I find is the best way to illustrate what you can do right and what you can do terribly wrong. With that being said, we’ll devote the next few posts to scenarios based on all four combinations:
- low skill & high will
- high skill & high will
- high skill & low will
- low skill & low will
Stay tuned…..

Note: Many of the thoughts and ideas derived with skill and will come from the Situational Leadership approach developed by Hersey and Blanchard. This approach uses different terms than skill (competence) and will (commitment), but many of the thought processes are the same. I’d suggest reading The One Minute Manager if you are interested in learning more about this model and the practical application of it in the workplace.
October 15, 2019
If You’re Not Onboard, Get Off the Ship!
The best piece of advice I heard at the recent SHRM19 National Conference came from Cy Wakeman’s session “Business Readiness: Ensuring Our Teams are Ready for What’s Next.”

As a consultant, I spend a great deal of my time helping organizations navigate change, from determining what change is needed to creating the roadmap of how to accomplish the change to how to get employee buy-in. The hardest part is often getting employees on board, helping them understand the need for change and addressing their resistance.

The current change management process caters too much to the individual employee when it should focus more on the overall business need for change. Leaders spend a great deal of time sitting on the sidelines with those few employees on the bench trying to convince them why they need to get in the game with everyone else. They allow the minority of employees who want to resist the change to stall the process or to even quash it.

According to Cy, leadership needs to stop trying to please everyone and focus on those employees who are champions for change and who understand the vision, because they will be the ones who drive change forward. And change is all about ensuring the sustainability of the organization and creating an opportunity for growth. Those resistant will only hold the organization back and will never support the change. Their resistance is driven by their own ego, not what’s in the best interests of the organization.

So how can organizations effectively navigate change management?
1. Don’t jump the gun. Change management isn’t a race, it’s not about being the fastest out of the starting gate. Take the time needed upfront to thoroughly assess the need for change, the options for how to make the change, and the impact each option will have on the organization as a whole. Proper planning will lead to proper execution. Making snap decisions too often leads to the need to backtrack, which causes employees to lose faith in leadership’s ability to manage and makes them more resistant to change.
2. Explain the why then move forward. It’s important to maintain a level of transparency with employees. Explain the why behind the change in terms that all employees can understand and outline how the change will positively impact the organization as a whole. But don’t dwell on it. Once you’ve explained it, move on to the how and when. Don’t let resistant employees continue to question the why this is where change stalls.
3. Think inside the box. A key point that Cy made was that we’ve been conditioned to “think outside the box” and that method of thinking tends to lead to passing the buck. The tendency when we think outside the box is to think of how we can use others to get things accomplished. She recommends we start thinking inside the box by asking “what can I do” instead of “what can others do”.
4. Stop trying to please everyone. You will have resistant employees, it’s inevitable. Stop focusing on pleasing them. Organizations change because it’s necessary to continue to thrive and grow. It’s best for the organization as a whole, so stop wasting your energy on that small minority who refuse to get on board, who protest change. They are stalling your organization’s growth and the majority of employees who are supportive of the change are suffering as a result, so is the organization. Those employees have a choice, and Cy put it so eloquently:
“Stay in joy or go in peace, but you can’t stay in hate.”

For more on change management, you may also enjoy our posts Change Management: Celebrating the Small Victories and 4 Ways to Help Change Happen When Change is Hard
July 18, 2019
Five Quick Teambuilding Activities
I once put on about 30 articles of clothing in a matter of a couple of minutes. My team won. I once had to build a wooden tower while blindfolded and being instructed by others what to do. My team lost. I did these things (and many more) at a previous employer where we had morning meetings and every Friday was Fun Friday. We’d forego the regular meeting content of financials, project updates, and announcements every Friday morning to have fifteen minutes of fun. It was the weekly meeting everyone looked forward to and usually, we all walked away laughing and smiling. And we’d talk about it for days, weeks, and sometimes I still see former co-workers posting old videos and pictures from some of the activities we did.

Managers took turns planning the activities, which ranged from trivia to challenges to charades to getting pies in the face. Some were team activities, some were every man for themselves. And there was always a prize for the winners.

Here are five quick teambuilding activities to get your teams engaged, energized, and best of all, working together and having fun.
1. Team Trivia. Pick a theme and come up with 10-15 questions. Divide up into groups and each group is given a copy of the questions to write down their answers. Then switch papers with another team and reveal the right answers. The team with the most right wins a prize.
2. Scavenger hunt. Give each team 5-10 clues for items that are found around the office or facility and send them on their way. The first team to bring back all the items wins a prize.
3. Charades. Break into teams and take turns having one player from each team draw a clue and act it out. Their team has 30 seconds to guess what the clue is. If they fail, the other team has a chance to steal the point. Some clue ideas- movie titles, song titles, or animals.
4. Pass the package. Wrap a gift or just a box in layers of wrapping paper. Grab a die and two oven mitts. Pick a number 1-6. The first player has to put on the oven mitts and try to unwrap the gift while the next person in line rolls the die. When they roll the designated number, it becomes their turn and the next player begins to roll the die. To see this fun in action, here’s a video.
5. Get to know you. This works well with slightly larger groups. Prior to the meeting ask everyone attending to submit one unusual fact about themselves. For example, I have traveled to 45 out of the 50 states. Compile all of these statements and give a copy to each employee in the meeting and give them 10-15 minutes to mingle and find out who the statement belongs to. The person with the most at the end wins a prize. This is a great way for employees to get to know each other better and is a great conversation starter. Employees may also find that they have some things in common.
These activities don’t take a lot of time, but they can have a big impact on your employees, their team dynamics, and just overall morale.

How do you encourage teambuilding at work? What other quick teambuilding activities can you come up with?
June 13, 2019
Create Insights Instead of Giving Feedback
“….But the most helpful advice is not a painting. It is instead a box of paints and a set of brushes. Here, the best team leaders seem to say, take these paints, those brushes, and see what you think you can do with them. What do you see, from your vantage point? What picture can you paint?” from Nine Lies About Work

A few weeks ago, we talked about how neuro research shows us that for learning to happen, insights have to be created. We talk a lot about giving and receiving feedback in the workplace and how necessary it is. But what if it is more important to create insights than to give positive or negative feedback?

What’s the difference? Feedback is about you telling people what you think and giving them the path forward from that in most cases. Insights are people discerning what they think.

Research shows us that people are more likely to act on what they think not what you think because insight is brain food which creates dopamine which makes us feel good. (When was the last time traditional feedback gave you a shot of dopamine?)

So as a leader, creating insights may be the better way to get the results you need rather than trying to give feedback.

How do you do it though? Our previous post suggests some ways. There are also some helpful ways in Nine Lies About Work by Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall. Their “insights” suggest focusing on the 1) past 2) present and 3) future and all revolved around asking good questions, not giving good answers*.
1. Start with the Present: Ask, “What three things are working right now?” For more on this, especially when utilizing it for change management purposes, read here.
2. Revisit the Past: Ask, “When you had problems/situations like this in the past, what did you do that worked?”
3. Finish with the Future: Ask, “What do you already know you need to do? What do you know already works?”
My little girl loves to paint and draw. Often, she asks me to help her draw something. We’ve been on a heart drawing kick lately. The first few times, I’ve drawn a heart on a page or a canvas for her to color or paint in. But then I stopped doing it and just left her to it. What I discovered was that her own hearts were better than anything I could have ever helped her create. I just need to provide the tools and she can do the rest better than I can.

How are you providing the right tools and asking the right questions in order to give people the opportunity to grow?

*Nine Lies About Work is an insightful book linked to a lot of research. The way they phrase the nine lies, though, may just be a matter of semantics, so don’t let the titles of the lies fool you. Read the context in the chapters. In this case, you may be giving feedback in the form of creating insights. Don’t take this to mean you need to scratch giving feedback. Just make sure you do it in a way that leads to learning and engagement instead of in a way that leads to disengagement. For more, read the book on how to do this.
June 4, 2019
5 Ideas for Retaining Talent in a Tough Labor Market

Most HR professionals and business leaders today are concerned about finding and keeping talent. If you are going to focus on one, I’d suggest you start first by focusing on retaining talent.

Broadly, the best way to retain talent is to create an environment where people have key needs met. These needs are described in Daniel Pink’s book Drive. They are 1) The need to direct their own lives 2) The desire to do better for ourselves and our world 3) To learn and create new things.

But given these three things, what are some practices that can actually be implemented? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Customized total rewards/benefits. In other words, what a 20-year-old wants/needs are different than what a 40-year-old and a 60-year-old need and want. You could use other criteria besides age to illustrate this point as well. One-sized fits all benefits don’t work anymore. Ala Carte benefits and pay are more effective.

For more thoughts on this, you might find these posts helpful:

A Look Back On the Best Way to Thank Employees is to Make it Personal

3 Steps for Driving Employee Engagement through Personalization

2. Two-way senior leadership exposure. Senior leadership needs to be exposed to front line staff and vis versa in order to identify and develop high potential employees and align them for growth opportunities. Set-up a time where senior leadership regularly “walks the floor” and interacts with the front line.

3. Link all practices and rewards to company values.

For more thoughts on this, you might find these posts helpful:

Marketing Your Core Values and Culture

6 Ways to Design Your Performance Management System Around Company Values

4. Implement “buddy systems”. This is a system where HR or bosses are not involved but where people can connect with others at work about problems or issues and work them out with their peers. These could be work or non-work related. Allow latitude for those solutions to be implemented.

5. Capture learning while it is being made. Make videos of products being made and designed especially if you deal in customized things that aren’t produced regularly (processes not on paper but in the video). This can help people who are creating the learning be able to meet number two and three above and also help people who are learning from them fulfill need three.

With turnover costing companies 100-300% of the person’s annual salary, not to mention the challenge of finding people in this tight labor market, it is worth implementing things that make sense for your business to help you retain and train those you already have.

Which of these five things makes the most sense for your organization to help you retain talent?

May 7, 2019