Album 3: Developing People
This album focuses on engaging, growing and retaining your employees.
Transcripts
Episode 1
Transcript
TheGiftofPerspective.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
You're listening to the MentalNotes podcast. In this episode, founder Scott Dow explains how to give career advice.
There's an important gift you can give your employees, and it's a form of career advice. I'm going to share what it is, but before I do, I want you to consider this: developing an employee is a lot like raising a teenager. You have a couple years of authority left, and you want to make sure they're on the right track, but you have to compete with the peer pressure they're facing, and that can be really hard.
Teenagers are very mission-focused: they're in a hurry to grow up, they want to get out of the house. They're on a mission to get into their dream college, or on a mission to move someplace cool, or get a specific job. They're impatient and they're focused on the outcome.
Employees are the same way: they want a certain title, or promotion, or pay increase, or transfer. It's all about the outcome. And like teenagers, the outcome they're chasing is influenced by what their peers or siblings have done. Listen, LinkedIn is a blessing, and it's a curse. It's a curse because people can compare their career arc with others and they grow even more impatient.
So what's the advice? It has to do with how people measure their growth. Most employees use outcomes to measure their growth, and that's a recipe for career-long frustration. Promise it. Think of it this way: if someone views career advancement solely in terms of promotions, or job titles, or salary increases, or rewards, then they won't experience growth very often. These are milestones, and milestones are important, but they're also misleading, and they don't come around very often.
We all know people that got the promotion they wanted, but they weren't prepared and they failed. They got their outcome, but they weren't ready; they hadn't grown enough along the way. When people view their growth as the experiences they've gained, the people they meet, the relationships they've developed, the things they've tried, the problems they've overcome, then they can experience and track their growth day-to-day, and they're prepared for whatever opportunity comes their way.
Here's an important secret to share: most career progression is random. People can't control when promotions come available. If you pin your hopes and your career progress on things outside your control, you're going to have a frustrating career. But if you think of career advancement as a series of little things, a process that you can engage in each day, then you seize control of your career. You're going to be in a much better place. Outcomes will still be random, but you'll be better prepared to enjoy the ride and to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.
In this album, we focus on how to develop people, but start by giving people this gift. It's the gift of perspective. Milestones are important, but time is so precious. Make sure they understand the value of daily, incremental growth. And share the truth. Be honest: you can't control the opportunities that are going to come their way. Neither can they. But you can enable opportunities for them to grow into whatever opportunities come their way. That's the gift of leadership, and that's how you start developing people.
Episode 2
Transcript
TeachingTechniques.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
You're listening to the Mental Notes Podcast. In this episode, founder Scott Dow explains how to help people grow beyond their comfort zone.
Every boss has a reputation, and the best reputation you can have is being a good teacher. The next time you interview somebody, ask them to describe the very best boss they ever worked for. I bet they talk about how much they learned from that boss. If you want to be a good boss, you have to be a good teacher. Good teachers help their students go beyond their comfort zone.
How do you do that? To help someone go beyond their comfort zone, you have to help them develop four things: interest, opportunities, confidence, and resilience. Without these four things, people tend to stay in their comfort zone.
Think about it. You have to develop interest in something outside their comfort zone or they'll lack the motivation to venture outside of it. You have to develop opportunities for them to get outside the comfort zone, or they'll lack the direction. You have to develop their confidence to try new things, or they'll lack courage. You have to develop the resilience to keep trying or they'll give up easily.
Interest is based on curiosity so you need to get people curious about something outside their comfort zone. How do you do that? You focus on their aspirations. Aspirations require something new. A new skill, experience, relationship, or accomplishment. Just because something is new doesn't make me curious, but if that something new is tied to something I really want, then I get curious. Now you've got my attention. You've captured my interest.
The best opportunity is a chance to learn through trial and error. If someone needs to improve their presentation skills, have them make a lot of presentations. If they lack confidence, creating opportunities for them to watch others making presentations, they can learn and grow confidence vicariously.
To develop resilience, have people talk about their past accomplishments. People love to talk about what they've done, and their story almost always includes setbacks, disappointments, and adversity.
Sometimes people just need to be reminded that the things they are most proud of didn't come easy, and that if they aspire to something new, that's outside of their comfort zone, they're going to have to be resilient again.
A quick recap. Good managers are good teachers and good teachers help their students go beyond their comfort zones. To do that, you have to generate interest, opportunities, confidence, and resilience.
The best way to practice this is on yourself. From time to time, stop and ask yourself these questions: What are my aspirations? What skills do these aspirations require? What opportunities can I pursue or ask for? Which of my strengths can I play to? What adversity can I expect? What are the similar challenges I've already overcome?
Self reflection is a part of your self coaching practice, and this is a form of self reflection. The more repetitions you get practicing this on yourself, the easier it's going to be to apply with others.
You've got a good teacher in your background. Remember what they were like, remember how they served you, then pay that forward to the people working for you today.
Episode 3
Transcript
DevelopmentPlans.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
You're listening to the MentalNotes podcast. In this episode, founder Scott Dow explains five different ways you can develop people.
Let me ask you a question. What if your boss developed a plan for your growth? How would that make you feel? What if they had you collaborate on that plan, too? What if they managed the plan like a project and even helped you execute it? What if they pushed you, held you to high standards and made you accountable for progress against the plan? How would that make you feel?
Would it make you feel valued, safe, confident? Chances are it would. Would it make you work harder? Probably. So why don't more managers do this? They don't do it because it's easy not to. Everyone's busy. This stuff is easy to talk about, and it's really really hard to do.
I'm going to give you a workaround solution, a hack for developing your people. I want you to be a unicorn, that rare manager that has custom development growth plans with every employee. You're ready? First, a little context. Let's start with how people learn. People learn by socializing, through trial and error, experience, observation, and rehearsal. This hack is based on these five learning methods. Let's take a look at each.
Knowledge is shared between people and within groups. That's why socializing is a common learning method. Every failure creates a learning opportunity. That's why trial and error is an important learning methodology. Nothing beats hands-on or on-the-job learning. That's why experience is the best teacher. But vicarious experience is always the next best thing. That's why observing others work is a very important learning method. And finally, preparation shortens the learning curve. That's why rehearsal or practice is an important learning method.
So here's the hack. You simplify a growth plan into monthly tasks. You base the tasks on these learning methodologies and then you track their progress against each task. There are five growth tasks you can focus on. You give people someone to meet, something to try, something to achieve, something to observe, and something to practice.
These tasks reflect those five learning methods, and you don't have to come up with five tasks, you can use two or three. It depends on the individual. You don't have to use every learning strategy, you can pick and choose from the five I've shared. Identify tasks that can be completed in 30 days and review their progress each month. Push your peopl. If you think they can complete three tasks, give them four tasks, five tasks to accomplish.
Set aside 130-minute meeting a month to review their growth plan. If they met someone, ask them to share their impressions. If they tried something new, ask them what surprised them. If they accomplished something, ask them what hurdles they had to overcome. If they observed something new, ask them what best practices they discovered, and if they practiced on something, ask them what they're still struggling with and coach them through the issue.
No, I don't want to discount this by referring to it as a hack. This is one of the most important routines you can build as a leader. Nothing will pay performance dividends like the systematic, strategic, and consistent focus on employee development. The hack I've described takes about an hour each month per employee. That's it. It's half an hour in the meeting with your employee. It's 15 to 20 minutes strategizing on their growth tasks.
You really want to put some thought to them in 10 to 15 minutes facilitating their growth task. You might have to pick up the phone and call one of your colleagues who you want your employee to meet. So to be a unicorn, to be that one manager out of a hundred, that has high impact growth strategies enabled for every employee, you need to find the equivalent of one to two days a month. You can do it. The ROI on this investment is well worth it. Remember, how would you feel if your manager did this for you?
Episode 4
Transcript
Standards.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
You're listening to the MentalNotes podcast. In this episode, founder Scott Dow explains two common mistakes that leaders make when setting standards.
A standard is an invaluable leadership tool, but you have to use it properly. There are two common mistakes leaders make when using standards, and I'm going to illustrate them with two personal experiences.
When my daughter was preparing for her driving test, I got to teach her how to parallel park. So we went to an empty parking lot, and I brought along two big plastic trash cans. I found a curb, and I used one trash can to simulate the front car's back bumper, and I used a second trash can to simulate the back car's front bumper.
So my daughter started to back into the space and immediately hit the curb. Then she pulled forward and bumped over the front trash can. Then she backed over the rear trash can before settling into her parking space. She looked at me with this big smile on her face and said, "Dad, I think I'm ready."
So the first common mistake: You can't coach someone without explaining the standards you're coaching to. Dad made the mistake of assuming that the standard was fully understood. I started coaching without explaining the standard. And I was in no position to give constructive feedback. I made an avoidable coaching mistake.
So the second common mistake. When I was a young man, I coached a basketball team of high school freshmen. So I worked for the varsity coach, and my team was horrible at free throw shooting. We were making about 50 percent of our free throws, and the varsity coach challenged me to raise their performance to 70 percent.
So I pulled the team together, communicated the standard, and we went to work every day in practice. Before long, we were making over 70 percent of our free throws in practice, but our performance in the games actually suffered. In fact, we dropped pretty well below 50 percent.
So my varsity coach stopped by practice one day and watched me coaching on the free throw technique, and he saw what I saw. My team could stand on the free throw line, shooting free throw after free throw, and they'd make seven, sometimes eight or 10, free throws out of 10. After about 10 minutes, he suggested I swing by the varsity practice later that night.
Now, in the varsity practice free throws, they didn't shoot 10 or 20 in a row like we were doing. Each player would furiously jump rope for 30 seconds before stepping to the free throw line, and then they shot only two free throws. That's it. Then they'd repeat the process 10 times. Jump rope, shoot two. Jump rope, shoot two.
Now I realized what I was missing. I was missing the context. In games, you only shoot two free throws. That's it. There's no chance to find a rhythm like we were doing in practice. And your heart is beating through your chest while you're shooting the free throws. I figured out real quick what I was doing wrong.
The second common mistake leaders often do is they sugarcoat their standards. We talk about standards under the best-case scenarios. It's easy to make free throws when you're shooting them over and over. It's hard when you can't find your rhythm, sweat's dripping in your eyes, and your heart is pounding at 150 beats per minute.
So a few rules of thumb. First thing is this, never set a standard without explaining why the standard is important. And the second thing is this, always explain when the standard is hardest to live up to.
Let's use a real-life example. So you expect people to be flexible and open to change. The standards you might set sound something like this, "Always assume positive intent, and be willing to adapt." Now, those are really easy things to say, but hard to do.
When you explain the standards, you have to give it some context. It might sound something like this, "Sometimes we're going to be asked to do things we don't agree with or don't want to do." See, I just gave my standard some context. Then, empathize with the team. It might sound something like this, "I know it's frustrating, and our changes aren't always explained very well."
Then what you do is you explain why the standard is important. That might sound something like this, "Resisting an inevitable change only prolongs our frustration. That's why it's important that we assume positive intent and try to quickly adapt."
Standards are the basis of all feedback. My daughter didn't understand why I wasn't excited about her parking performance, why I wasn't as excited as she was, but that's my fault. It's not hers. Standards are also the basis of all employee development. My team had to understand that the standard we were shooting for was two free throws at a time, with sweaty palms and a racing heartbeat. That's what we were working towards.
So here's how you practice this. Focus on one area of feedback you want to give more of. Now think through how you want to promote that standard. Why is it important? When will it be hard to live up to?
Then find someone that embodies that standard and use them as a role model. Visualize yourself having this discussion with individuals and with your entire team. Don't sugarcoat the standard, and don't assume people understand the importance of the standard. I can tell you this works with freshman boys and 16-year-old daughters, and it'll work with your team, too.