PROBLEMS
CARE:
Your care will only be seen to be unconditional if you
still hold people accountable for performance
her and dealing with her problem and her performance. She would not see my care as conditional.
Paradoxically, care is only seen as unconditional if the person is still held accountable for standards. Arnold Moll articulates this simply and well. He believes that one should be soft on people and hard on standards.
When one examines the question of personal problems one discovers that, underlying the matter, there is a simple golden rule. In a relationship of command,
the job of the superordinate is to care unconditionally for the subordinate.
Care will only be demonstrated as unconditional if standards are not allowed to be compromised.
Communication
We have already dealt with this issue of communication when we looked at the issue of surrogate management. However, it is important to recap the argument in this context. Communication is all too often seen as a media issue. The following is typical of the kind of conversations my colleague Wendy and I often have with senior executives concerning communications in their organisations.
Wendy: Tell me about your internal communications strateg y.
Joe: It is very advanced. Wendy: Really?
Joe: We have done everything that opens and shuts when it comes to communication. We produce a corporate video every quarter. We have a monthly newsletter. We have the best e-mail infrastructure in the business. All changes are communicated on management briefs. We really are doing well.
How is the subordinate going to know that the leader is conditional? Strangely enough the answer lies less in the kindness of his manner and more in its harshness. Consider the following case. I have a subordinate, Jane, who is obviously having personal problems, but is not talking. I approach her and the following interaction takes place:
ES: Hi, Jane. Jane: Hello. ES: How are you? Jane: Fine.
A moment of silence follows as we look at each other uncomfortably.
ES: You know, I’ve noticed recently that you’re not quite up to things. Are you sure everything is all right?
Jane: Yes.
ES: You don’t have a problem of some kind that you would like to discuss? Jane: Look, it’s very personal and I don’t want to talk about it.
ES: I respect that. But please remember that my door is always open. If you want to talk about it, please feel free to come to me.
Jane: Thank you.
I’m sure everyone would agree that my approach was most commendable and worthy of a caring leader. The problem is that my sincerity has not been tested. My sincerity is only tested once Jane’s problems have an impact on her performance. How I handle this situation will really demonstrate my sincerity.
One approach would be if I said something like: “Look Jane, we really have to sort this problem out now because it’s having a serious impact on your performance. Please talk to me about it. Can I get you a counsellor? Shall I send you to Personnel?” What I would be doing in this case is pressurising her to talk. I would be sending her a very clear message. She will think, “He’s pressurising me to talk in order to improve my performance.” She would see my care as conditional and would probably feel manipulated.
However, if after trying to talk to her, her performance suffered and I held her accountable for that performance – in other words, disciplined her – there would be no connection between my care for
VALUE FOR
PERSONAL
PROBLEMS
CARE:
Your care will only be seen to be unconditional if you
still hold people accountable for performance
VALUE
FOR
COMMUNICATION
HONESTY:
Be open/disclose Do more than avoid lyingAnd so it is with most executives. Just mention the word ‘communication’ and their minds fill with media. No thought, however, is given to the issue of content.
Wendy: Yabba yabba yabba. Joe: He?
Wendy: Yabba yabba yabba Joe: What?
Wendy reaches for a memo pad, addresses a memo to him and writes the message ‘Yabba yabba yabba.’ She gives it to him.
Joe: I don’t understand. Wendy: Precisely.
The point is not that I said it, that it was written on a pad, or even put on a video. The content is nonsense. It says nothing. The point about all message-making is that the message should say something. The point of all communication is content. The content category is a dangerous one, because again, there is a golden rule associated with it. Content is useless if it is not true. People will assess the credibility and therefore the acceptability of a message based on its truthfulness. The golden rule of all communication is honesty.
By its nature honesty is an uncompromising category. It expects you to be unconditional. The more conditional you are about the truth, the more you will lie, and the more situations will cause you to lie. If you asked me about where I live, and I told you I live in Gauteng, then you have not demonstrated anything about my honesty, notwithstanding the fact that what I said was perfectly true. You only demonstrate my honesty when you ask me about something that would potentially damage my interests and I still speak the truth. You are only considered to be consistent with a value or golden rule when you act consistently with it when it is not in your interest to do so.
Wendy reports that our client Dulux first started communicating financial information when the business was in dire straights financially. This information was greeted with scepticism initially. Employees were of the view that management was only communicating to legitimise poor wage increases. However, as the performance of the business improved, management continued communicating this information. It was at this point that people began to accept
the information. Empowerment is about pushing people to realise the best in themselves.
There is a further requirement associated with honesty, and that is that one must do more than avoid lying. Let us assume that John is Dianne’s boss and they are in the pub on Friday night. They chat for three hours, about everything from next year’s business strategy to the cricket. On Monday Dianne comes to work and is informed about a set of circumstances that will dramatically affect her interests. She discovers, further, that on Friday night John was aware of these changes but he did not tell her. He did not lie about it, because it had not occurred to Dianne to ask him about it. The question is, does Dianne experience John as having been honest with her? Probably not.
Honesty implies openness, which requires doing a bit more than not lying. This openness also suggests that the leadership of an enterprise dedicates whatever time is required to keep people apprised of how the organisation is faring financially. If the role of the leader changes from the one who gets things done by using people, to the one who enables people to get things done, then there is a clear requirement that the people are fully appraised not only of how to do what is required but also why. This why includes both the idea of the current
financial status of the business and the contribution the person is making to that financial status.
This introduces an idea that we at Schuitema refer to as line of sight. People have to know both what the target is that is required of them and how this relates to the overall business. At the Polythene Division of Sasol Polymers, for example, a key aspect of our intervention was to help the client to establish a clear line of sight between what people did and the overall business result. A person processing customer orders, for example, was not only given clear measure relating to her own performance, but how that affected the overall value added of the business.
Coaching
In this section, we are going to examine why a leader should coach
and what he should give his or her attention to. The question of how
simple, task-related way, it is somewhat obvious that the leader should coach the subordinate. If, for example, you had a subordinate who could not do something that you could, and the subordinate needed the skill to perform the job, you would obviously coach him in the area in which he needs strengthening. If we argue that the job of the leader is to empower, this must be particularly true.
There is a caution though, and that is that one does not do the task on behalf of or spoon-feed that person. Your job is to teach him, not disable him. Teach him to fish; don’t give him a fish. Don’t make his monkey your monkey. Don’t give his monkey to your fish or your fish to his monkey. Above all, don’t fish for his monkey or monkey about with his fish! Or whatever.
This argument holds true for work- related problems generally. Most managers do not see their job as assisting subordinates to think through problems. They get impatient and immediately give the answer or shove the subordinate aside and do it them selves. It requires a great deal of discipline and patience to coach people.
Why should the boss do this? In our leadership programme we ask a question which, in a sense, makes the extreme case for coaching:
“A subordinate has shown good potential to be able to do your job. How much time would you spend to coach him?”
Surprisingly, many people respond that they would spend the necessary time, although they recognise the obvious threat to their security. The issue becomes really interesting when you ask them why they would do this. The answers generally relate to the following responses:
• If I teach him my job, my job becomes easier. I can get him to do some of my stuff.
• If I teach him my job, I can go on leave. Better still, I could be promoted because there is someone who can do my job. • If I teach him my job, there will be more skilled people in
the company and the company will do better.