Do You Have the Organizational Guts to Cut Average?

We talk a lot about how teams need top talent. “Top talent” this, “A player” that. The brilliant Steve Boese wrote here just a few weeks ago  about the need for superstar talent in the NBA.  His point was that most championship teams had a star.  No star, no championship.  The workplace reality, however, is that most teams don’t have a lot of superstars—they have a bunch of average performers.  Some organizations consistently tolerate the ordinary players but hope for extraordinary results.  Yeah, I guess that sometimes happens. More often, though, you get average performances out of folks you always knew were average. But tolerating average for a long time, rewarding it, and then later demanding more?  That can get bad.   Stick with me through the sports example for this one, ok? The Jacksonville Jaguars decided last week to cut their longtime starting QB, David Garrard, just five days before the season started. From espn.com : (Head Coach Jack) Del Rio acknowledged that the timing wasn't ideal. Garrard was released five days before the opener and just a couple of hours after he was introduced as the starting quarterback at a chamber of commerce luncheon put together to help promote the team…”I don't like the idea that the timing went down the way it did, but it did,” Del Rio said. “Ultimately as an organization we've got to make decisions when they're not comfortable and make the best decision for the football team. So, let’s make sure we know what went down. One week prior, Del Rio, the coach, named Garrard the starter. Not second string, not third string–the starter.  They announced it to the team, fans and media, and then they took him to the local Chamber of Commerce to show him off as the face of the franchise. Then, as soon as dessert was done, they cut him. Del Rio’s right—this was uncomfortable, but it’s because for too long the organization put up with a player’s average performances and rewarded him.  It’s good they finally got the guts to admit he was not the answer, but that call should have been made much earlier. Now they are disingenuous, and here’s the result: no one on the team will believe them when they talk about performance. Check out Hugh Douglas on nfl.com , former Jaguar and teammate of Garrard’s: If there was ever a coach who needs to be punched in the face for not being truthful to his players, it has to be Jack Del Rio.” Douglas…suggested the coach is burning bridges. “If I'm a Jacksonville Jaguar right now,” said Douglas, “I'm looking at Jack Del Rio right now like … first and foremost, 'You're not trustworthy.' “I can't believe that those guys in Jacksonville believe what Jack Del Rio is selling.” Yep, that about sums it up. You can’t preach that you are a high performance organization and then tolerate average performance. It just doesn’t work. Similarly, you can’t play around with people’s perceptions of where their performance ranks. In this example, management finally got the guts to cut an average guy, but it was late, and they tolerated it too long. When a former teammate says you need to get punched in the face for not being truthful, it’s a good hint that your credibility is shot. Editor's Note –  R.J. Morris is a staffing/talent acquisition director for McCarthy Building Companies based out of STL. Like many others in the FOT clan, he's a sports nut who can endlessly draw the parallels between athletes, sports and the talent management game. I know, I know, as if we needed more of that. That aside, he's got two master's degrees and more than a dozen years under his belt as an HR practitioner including as an HRD focused on staffing for McCarthy Building Companies, Inc.

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Tags: Boese, coach, Espn, jack, jaguars, performance management, productivity, result, rj morris, star, superstars, workplace

Who would win?

So in a free for all anything goes brawl who would win out of:

Crocodile Dundee and a Keyboard

VS

Mr T, a snickers bar and a smart phone.

VS

Bear Grylls & a stack of resume’s

AND WHY?

Tags: awesome, coach, examined, hrefhttpwwwsquidoocomchoosemarsvenuscoaching, topic, venus, whojust

Just Throw Strikes. Worst. Management. Practice. Evah.

My son plays high school baseball.  He earned a varsity letter his sophomore year and gets a lot of playing time.  I’m assuming that the coach wouldn’t put him in the game if he wasn’t adding value to the team.  He plays shortstop mostly.  Some 3rd base and he pitches pretty regularly.  I’ve been told he’s pretty good. Now, if your child has never pitched in a high-stakes game you can’t understand the pressure you feel as a parent.  It’s like they turned off all the lights in the ball park and put a single spot-light on the mound and one on you in the stands.   Two pinpoints of light – you and your kid.   Everything else fades into the background.  From that moment on everything in the game is a direct result of what your kid does.  Good or bad. I give you that background so you can understand my frustration at baseball games when my son takes the mound and is pitching.  The spectators want to help.  They yell encouragement from the stands. Here’s what they yell… wait for it….  “Just throw strikes.” Really?  Throw strikes?  Never thought of that.  I’m sure my kid never thought of that.  Just throw strikes.  What great advice and direction from the stands.   Are you kidding me?  What person in their right mind doesn’t know you’re supposed to throw strikes? (For you purists out there I know there are times when you don’t throw strikes, but you get the drift.) How does offering that advice help?  How can telling a kid to “just throw strikes” help?  Of course, he’d throw strike after strike after strike if he could.  That’s useless advice and assistance. Managers Too Often Tell People To Just Throw Strikes I bring this up because I’ve seen many a manager offer this kind of advice during reviews and when trying to guide behaviors.  How many times have you heard someone say “Write better.” “Communicate more clearly.”  “Be more helpful.”  Those aren’t actionable comments.  That’s like telling a kid to “throw strikes.”   The problem isn’t the outcome.  Everyone wants to be good at their job.  They want to write more clearly and be more helpful.  Telling them again about the outcome you want isn’t helping them get to that outcome. Mechanics My son’s coach never yells, “Just throw strikes!”  He knows that is stupid.   What he does do is talk about mechanics – release point, foot placement, timing – the things that lead to strikes. Look at the individuals on your team and the outcomes you want.  What are the things that need to be done that add up to those outcomes?  Is someone's writing too loaded with jargon?  Is the organization of an argument a bit too obtuse?  Is someone's idea of “helping” different than everyone else’s?  You need to dig into the issue and find out “why” the outcome isn’t happening.   As a manager, you are the one who is tasked with getting the behaviors aligned with the outcome.  Your job is NOT to reiterate the outcome. Most employees pretty much know the outcome you want.  Repeating it more often and in a louder voice doesn’t change the behaviors that lead to the outcome. As a manager are you looking at the mechanics of the outcomes you want and focusing on those?   Or are you a parent in the stand yelling “Just Throw Strikes.” Editor's Note -  Paul Hebert is the Managing Director for i2i (an influence consultancy), the brain behind Incentive Intelligence and a recognized authority on incentives and performance motivation. Want to know what's going to motivate your people to perform at their best and impact the bottom line? Want to know whether your service award program really means anything at all? And are there psychological principles that drive your employees behavior? Paul's your guy… unless you fervently bow down to Maslow.

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Tags: coach, drift, fades, games, hr (& life!) advice, Industry Chat, paul hebert, performance management, playing, spectators, stakes, strikes, useless, varsity, year

Coaching Recruiters. Shut up and let them talk!

This is the fifth blog in my series on great coaching for managers of recruiter teams. Previously I expanded on the importance of ‘live feedback’ , ‘real life coaching’ , as well as the tactic of ‘plugging in’ new recruits. Today we look at ‘role swapping’. Many managers I have worked with feel that if they are not doing the talking or showing the consultant how the job is done, then they are not providing valuable input. This is not always true. From time to time, it is highly effective for the manager or coach to reverse roles, providing feedback after the event. For example, once you have a consultant up to a certain level of competence, or even with your more experienced people, take them on a client visit with you where they lead the discussion, where they take in the job, where they do the selling and you play a secondary role. You may be surprised how difficult this is to do! Many managers simply cannot help themselves on a client meeting and leap in to take control. I understand why, but look at the bigger picture. When is the recruiter ever going to learn if you always take control? In fact you are setting that person up for disaster because the first time they actually get to run a client meeting, they really will be on their own. i.e. when you are not there. So sure, be ready to leap in if it goes totally off the rails, but otherwise let the recruiter run it. Then afterwards in the cab back to the office, or in a coffee shop, do a full, immediate de-brief, pointing out missed opportunities or where things could be handled differently. The same role swapping should be applied to interviewing candidates. Your consultant interviews, you observe and feedback afterwards. The most powerful coaching you will ever do.

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Coaching Recruiters. Shut up and let them talk!

Tags: Blog, coach, Coffee Shop, Competence, Disaster, employee engagement, Industry Chat, Interviews, job, leadership, life, Life Coaching, Management Skills, New Recruits, people, postings, Providing Feedback, recruiter, recruiters, recruits, result, Savage, Savage Truth, Tactic, Truth

Coaching Skills # 1 – Live Feedback

In my last blog post I explained how great coaching is built on two key functions – recognition and correction. Today I expand on one of the tactics I have found exceptionally helpful in mentoring and coaching recruiters to outstanding performance, ‘Live Feedback’. This may sound unusual, but a good leader who wants to have an impact as a coach should actively look out for opportunities to catch their consultants in the act of doing something good! Yes, live feedback starts with the positive. If you want to see a behaviour repeated, reward it via recognition. So for example, if you hear a consultant doing a great job of selling a temp rate to a candidate who was hoping for more, as soon as that recruiter puts down the phone, tell them. ‘Heard the way you handled that conversation Bob. Great job! It’s really crucial we keep our margins up on this temp desk and that starts with paying our temps market rates, but no more. Well done’. What’s more I think you should pass on this recognition publicly and immediately. It is wonderfully uplifting for the individual, and will certainly reinforce that behaviour. But it also starts to create a team ethos and culture that rubs off on everyone in the team. But of course as a manager you must also be on the lookout for practical situations to improve a consultant’s skill and performance. This is the ‘correction’ component of effective coaching. This will mean keeping an ear out for conversations where you feel the consultant has said the wrong thing or could have said something differently or better. The key here is not to be punitive or demeaning in words or tone. It’s a real skill to position your feedback as constructive, but it can be done. Say you heard a consultant making a bit of a hash of handling a counter-offer. You may start with something like this. ‘That was a tricky situation Bob, and you handled it well, but just thinking, when your candidate said he had been offered more money to stay, do you think it would have been good to take him back to his original reasons for considering a move…’ And out of that question will come an impromptu coaching session on handling these situations. It’s immediate. It’s powerful. It’s positive. Always be prepared to speak to the consultant immediately they have put the phone down. The learning and retention by the consultant is far more powerful if you can relate a concept to a real and recent situation. This takes discipline and means that you often have to consciously listen out for situations and opportunities. Live feedback is incredibly effective. It’s real because the consultant has just felt the euphoria of success and or the pain of failure. You will never have a better time to really drive home behaviour. And that is coaching. Coming up next week in this consultant coaching series of blog posts – ‘Real Life Situations’.

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Coaching Skills # 1 – Live Feedback

Tags: coach, coaching, Coaching Skills, conversations, desk, effective, Effective Coaching, Hash, Industry Chat, job, leadership, lookout, margins, mentoring, Performance Feedback, postings, recruiter, recruiter coaching, recruiters, recruitment agencies, result, Savage, Savage Truth, Tricky Situation

The Recruiting Manager as coach and mentor

As anyone who has been in recruitment for a while knows, the subtle and varied skills of our industry are best learned ‘on the job’, and they are always best communicated with the help of a mentor or coach, usually your manager, who can show how things work in real life. There are stats on this you can dig up I am sure, but experience has shown me that people learn by doing things, seeing things done and being coached in real time. Sure, classroom-style training has a place, but coaching is often more powerful as a real learning method. People often ask me, what exactly is ‘coaching,’ and how can we learn to coach our teams more effectively? Well, the way I understand it is that there are two primary functions of the ‘coach’. Firstly a good coach focuses a great deal on the positive . In fact, I believe recognition – for things done well – is a highly effective way to reinforce behaviours you want to see repeated. What’s more, that recognition should come publicly and as soon after the behaviour actually happens as possible. Funnily enough, although this aspect of coaching is the easiest and the most positive, I notice many managers find recognition hard to give. It’s as if we are not a ‘real’ manager unless we are always pointing out fault and deficiency in people. In my view, that could not be more wrong. The second primary function of a great mentor or coach (which is what every leader needs to be) is of course correction of behaviours and deficient activity levels. Importantly though, this guidance can and should be given in small bite-size chunks, in real-time and often ‘on the run’. There’s no need in most cases for a ‘meeting’ or ’special training session’. Often this correction is as simple as a two minute debrief when the recruiter puts down the phone to a client or candidate. How could we have promoted that candidate more effectively? When the client said this, did you think of saying that? My next four posts over the coming weeks will drill down on some great ‘on the job’ coaching tactics that I have learned and used over the years, and from which I have seen fantastic outcomes in terms of professional development of the teams I have run. First topic up next week will be ‘Coaching via live feedback’. Until then…

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The Recruiting Manager as coach and mentor

Tags: Bite Size, Classroom Style, coach, coaching, Deficient Activity, Guidance, Industry Chat, job, leadership, managing recruiters, Mentor, people, postings, Real Time, recruiter, recruitment agencies, Recruitment Agencies, Savage Truth, Seeing Things, Size Chunks, things, time, Training Session