The Facilitative Leaders’ Last Resort
You are free to make whatever choice you want, but you are not free from the consequences of those choices.
–Stephen Covey
When a person continues to underperform even in the face of clear expectations, or his or her behavior becomes intolerable despite direct, honest, and constructive feedback, there is one more tool in a manager’s set of management skills: the accountability conversation. Sometimes referred to as a “come to Jesus” meeting or being “called onto the carpet,” an accountability discussion can be a helpful intervention when done correctly. But so often managers screw these discussions up, and for a couple of easily corrected mistakes.
Usually when a manager has an accountability discussion with an employee, it has one of two possible effects. The first and the best response from an employee is that he or she takes the conversation in the best light realizing that this is a serious issue. So, it is important that the manager approaches the situation with the same respect and honesty.
One issue that kept raising its head with Charles was his tendency to ignore our group decisions and undermine our efforts as a team. He did this by telling other departments that he didn’t necessarily agree with our team’s decisions. It was often brought to my attention by people from other departments that Charles did this on a regular basis. This was frustrating to me and my team as his behavior undercut the credibility of our decisions and the motivation of the group to include Charles in our discussions.
I had had several discussions about this with Charles in which he assured me that he was a changed man and totally focused on our efforts. Despite his, let’s call them fabrications, I clearly communicated that it was not in his or anyone’s best interest to sabotage our efforts. Despite my coaching, which became more and more directive, I continued to hear about his disagreements with our department from people within the organization. I decided that we had reached a point at which it was necessary to have a “come to Jesus” meeting with him.
Have a Plan
The first consideration a manager must make is, and which I had to consider with Charles’s “back-stabbing” behavior, was whether this offense, issue, or subpar performance warrants an accountability discussion. A small infraction or mistake may not necessitate this sort of confrontation. Certainly, being late to a meeting is something that I believe can be addressed with some direct coaching and feedback. And unless it is extremely egregious or part of a larger, more ingrained set of behaviors, I certainly don’t think that it is something a person should lose a job over.
Unfortunately, too many managers avoid confrontation by putting up with chronic behavior or moving a poorly performing employee to another part of the organization, like Charles. I jump on problems before they become issues. Sometimes direct and honest feedback can save an employee’s career.
I had a salesperson who came into an offsite meeting wearing an inappropriate t-shirt with a sexist slogan on the front. I grabbed him before we started and told him to go back to his room and change it, even if he was late for the meeting. It wasn’t the thing I would spend time asking him his reasons for donning this particular t-shirt. I simply stated that it was inappropriate and he needed to change it. Afterward, I had a conversation with him about his desired career path and explained that if this was the attitude he had toward women, it would certainly prevent me from putting him in a position where he had to oversee women’s performance. He got the message because I was clear and unequivocal. This was not negotiable, and sometimes that is the position a manager must take. Especially if it is going to negatively impact others or the offenders’ potential career path.
But getting back to a “come to Jesus” meeting discussion, if a manager has been responsible to an employee by communicating clear expectations, providing prompt feedback, and allowing the employee to learn and despite this, he or she continues to make bad choices, then the employee has chosen to live with the consequences.
The challenge a manager faces is to communicate the choice an employee needs to make from an impersonal, objective point of view. This is especially difficult because by the time it gets to this point in a business relationship, a manager is often frustrated with the employee. In this emotional atmosphere, he or she might take a controlling path and threaten punishment. There is a choice, however.
By communicating the logical choice an employee must make, a manager can get out of the way and not control. The employee is ultimately responsible for his or her life and can learn by being given an opportunity to make a choice. This is not a discussion that should be taken lightly.
A thoughtful plan, especially for an inexperienced manager, can help both sides get through the conversation reasonably well. It is crucial that the manager identifies what to say and how to say it. Preplanning helps to relieve some of the stress that naturally goes with this situation. Preplanning should include self-examination to identify whether the manager has provided expectations and feedback prior to communicating choices. I would first make sure you have your manager’s support for this conversation especially if you will need his or her approval to follow through with the “incentive” to change. Because the last thing you want is for you to make an idle threat or consequences without the authority to follow through, it is important to clear that with HR or your manager at the very least.
Frame the Conversation
In this situation, your language should be more directive, than collaborative, but not unhelpful. Depending on how serious the issue is, you can adjust your tone to more serious and formal statement. Link the expectation and the negative behavior related to the expectation. The language should be firm and terse, and you must avoid getting derailed. You want to control this conversation. It is not a debate or a time to air other grievances.
You never want to have to revisit this issue, so being firm and clear is necessitated. And to some extent, it is not your responsibility, as a manager, to further coach and cajole. The end result of this discussion is to hand off the responsibility for the behavior to the employee; he or she is responsible whether they agree or not.
Communicating the seriousness of the issue is something that can be done well with how the conversation is framed. The phrase “I need to see you in my office” or “There is something we need to discuss that is relevant to your future in this company” sends a succinct message.
The Punishment Should Fit the Crime
This is where managers often find difficulty. While I use the term “punishment,” what I mean is “consequences.” But that said, the consequences can be seen by an employee as punishment, regardless of how well they are communicated. When it comes to connecting the consequence to the issue, it is necessary to make sure the person know that his or her problematic behavior has negative consequences for those who have to live with it.
First, remember that this is not about you; it is about running the business effectively, and this behavior is causing problems. Never threaten the employee that unless you see change, you will be the inflictor of the consequence. (“I’ll see you never work in this town again!”) When you think about it, this person is choosing to accept the consequences of his or her behavior by continuing the behavior and disregarding the impact his or her behavior is having on others and even himself, whether he or she knows it or not.
But the ultimate consequence, employment termination, is extreme and has a finality that is difficult to soft-pedal. And if, in fact, you do not have the backing of the company and HR, it may be an idle threat.
Some of the consequences, short of and different than losing a job, include a lower rating on the yearly performance review or the loss of a management career path or denial of working on desired projects. You should tie the consequence to the behavior whenever possible. A low rating on a performance review in the areas impacted by his or her behavior, connects the issue with the consequence. A limited career path is easily connected to working as a team or listening to other’s input or helping others to achieve their goals. A manager should think it through so as to tie the consequence as logically as possible to the performance issue.
Coming back to Charles and his sabotaging behaviors, I began the discussion very directive. After one of my coworkers brought Charles’s backstabbing behavior to my attention . . . again, I had to evaluate whether this person was trying to promote their own personal agenda or vendetta, but satisfied the feedback source was valid. Again, you must check, but not reveal your sources. I approached Charles with the intention of putting an end to this behavior once and for all.
“Charles, I need to see you in my office.”
To which Charles replied, “I’m right in the middle of something. Can it wait?”
At this point, I wanted to send a clear message that this was an important and serious conversation we were about to have. “This matter is more important than anything you might be working on. We need to meet now.”
That got his attention.
He followed me into my office and I intentionally shut the door behind us. That raised the tension, I hoped, and the stakes.
“Why did you want to see me boss?” Charles said.
“It has come to my attention that yet again you have undermined the effectiveness of the team by telling other departments that you disagree with some of the decisions we’ve made.”
“Who told you that?”
This is where managers often get off track. The question is not legitimate if you’ve checked your sources.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ve checked my sources and this is not the first time we’ve discussed this issue. So, I am confident in the source,” I said holding my ground.
“Well, it matters to me.”
“Regardless, I am not going to be drawn into a discussion of who said what especially because I know that this has happened.”
This is where Charles made his first mistake, “Well, whoever said it is lying. I would never do something like that.”
“Yes you have and yes you did, and now you’ve just lied to me. Would you like to continue?”
That stopped him. Charles looked like a deer in the headlights. I had him and he knew it. He also knew how serious this situation was; I was making it that way.
“Okay, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” His contrition was hopeful but this was a tactic he had tried before.
“Charles, you know that in meetings I solicit everyone’s input including yours. We respectfully disagree while behind closed doors, but when we take a decision, I expect everyone to support it, even if they disagree with it. We have to present ourselves to other departments as a team.”
Charles was despondent and let me go on.
“Your behavior is impacting the credibility of our group, credibility we need to ensure confidence in our decisions and direction. Do you understand that?”
“Um, yes.” I was not so sure he bought into the idea, especially since his previous contrition was insincere.
“So you have to ensure this never happens again. We will not have this conversation again. If it happens again then it will seriously impact your yearly performance review and ultimately your income and ability to move up in the organization. I cannot recommend someone for a position of authority when he or she deliberately sabotages our efforts, regardless of how much you disagree with the decisions we take. That is not the behavior I or the company look at as a leadership quality.”
He wasn’t done yet with his challenge. “What are you saying here? I might lose my job over this?”
“No one is talking about losing a job, Charles. We are talking about a serious issue that needs to change, immediately.”
“So my job is not in jeopardy, right?”
“Performance ratings are one measure of your effectiveness in your job. There are many others that play into a career direction. But understand, this is serious enough to impact your performance review. We can leave it at that.”
I told Charles to sleep on it and we would discuss it further the next day. I wanted the message to sink in hoping that with a little time and reflection, he would get on board. In the end, I would find out whether Charles was on the bus or off the bus, regardless of what he told me. And I had decided that if it happened once more, we were done . . . and he would not see it coming. As I promised, we were not having another conversation on this topic.
Luckily for both of us, Charles did some deep soul-searching and came back the next day with a greatly revised attitude and approach. Perhaps his partner or friend gave him some good advice. I didn’t know. But I was resolute and that is important. When you state the consequence, you must follow through. If you don’t, you lose credibility above and below.
So, don’t make promises you can’t keep and use this type of discussion judiciously.
It quickly becomes obvious that communicating choices is a last resort for managers. Ensuring that clear expectations, feedback, and strategic nonintervention precede this step is the key to ensuring that this tactic is fair to the employee. It is critical that choices the employee must make are not related to what the manager wants. It isn’t being “done” to the employee by the manager. Rather it is the choice the employee must make to live within the agreed-upon expectations of the company.
Accountability and the Facilitative Leader
Managers who try to make people responsible by holding them accountable fail to realize that this is a disguised attempt to make people conform. People do much better when they choose to take responsibility and hold themselves accountable.
Managers can take two different approaches to holding people accountable. The use of reward and punishment is seen by employees as an attempt to get them to “fall in line.” Facilitating the process of taking responsibility allows the manager to get out of the way of an employee’s learning. Strategic nonintervention allows the employee to learn by experiencing the direct consequences of his or her own behavior. Choice of consequences teaches by forcing employees to make decisions about their future behavior.
For managers to help people accept more responsibility, they need to have a more objective and impersonal perspective of their responsibilities. Managers are not responsible for their employees’ behavior. They are responsible to them by providing expectations, feedback, and the opportunities to learn. Managers will have an easier time in the long run if they let their employees work out their own answers to problems.
The facilitative leader realizes people will take responsibility when they feel confident in the choices they make. People gain confidence by having opportunities to make choices and experience the direct consequences. Rewards and punishments are not direct consequences; they are the manager’s consequences.
Helping people become responsible is about facilitating the opportunities for people to make choices and learn. It is realizing that people are works-in-progress and that experience is the best teacher. Watching people experience the negative consequences of their choices can be painful. It is pleasant when the consequences are positive. Facilitative leaders detach themselves and find pleasure in the learning that takes place from both types of choices. It can be painful to watch a person learn from bad decisions, but it results in people taking more responsibility for their lives and holding themselves accountable.
A manager’s responsibility is to strategically allow people the opportunity to learn. When managers try to make people more responsible through reward and punishment, they are not managing. They are trying to control.
A manager’s responsibility is to facilitate learning. There is a fine line between facilitating learning and abdicating responsibility. The difference is attention and involvement. Abdication is passive. Applying the concept of strategic nonintervention, using feedback and choice of consequences, is actively managing.
Charles’s last problem stems from his manager’s attempts to control his behavior through reward and punishment. Charles was deprived of his ability to learn. His manager tried to hold him accountable without allowing him to experience the consequences of his behavior.
In the end, Charles rose to the challenge. While not an overachiever, he became a productive and enthusiastic team member we all came to rely upon. He worked for me an additional year and a half at which time I recommended him for a promotion. When asked by his soon-to-be manager whether I had enough confidence in Charles’s ability to meet the expectations of his new position, I quickly asked, “I think he can as long as you make clear to him the things that will be expected of him and his team.”
And so, it goes . . .
Facilitating Responsibility |
|
Demands compliance |
Presents choices |
Implies moral judgment |
Objective and impersonal |
Focuses on blame |
Focuses on future |
Uses positional power |
Uses communication and persuasin |
Can Facilitative Leadership Work in the American Business Culture?
Another way to pose the question in the title of this chapter is “Can a process-based management philosophy work in a results-based corporate culture?” The answer to this question can be found by examining a previous attempt to do exactly this.
The “Empowerment” Myth
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, management came to believe that decisions were best made by the people closest to the customer. This was the basis for the “empowerment” movement in corporations. Most companies subscribe to this “empowerment” as the best way to service customers.
In response to this belief, managers were encouraged to “empower” their people by giving them more authority to make decisions. In response, a manager’s role shifted from control to ensuring that their people took responsibility and made smart decisions. When managers tried to “empower” their people, employees resisted being “empowered.” As corporations and managers encountered unexpected difficulties, the movement slowed. Corporations, managers, and employees became disenchanted with the entire idea.
In frustration, managers frequently sought out consultants, corporate gurus, and motivational speakers to help them answer the questions, “How can we get people to make decisions and take responsibility?” and “How can we empower people?” Despite the time and money spent searching for the answers to these questions, it seems that even today the “empowerment” movement is still bogged down.
And the “empowerment” movement will continue to be bogged down until corporations realize that the true answer to the question “How can we empower people?” is “You can’t.” At least not with an autocratic-behaviorist management model.
When the “empowerment” philosophy was adopted into our “just do it” corporate culture, the result was a control-based approach to “empowering” people. Managers attempted to do this by giving people more responsibility and holding them accountable for making responsible decisions. The underlying misconception was that managers had the power to make people take responsibility.
As managers tried to give people responsibility, they were frustrated because people resisted taking it. They resisted because the methods used to “empower” people were thinly disguised attempts to control and manage results. They were attempts to externally motivate people to hold themselves accountable. In other words, management was trying to extrinsically motivate people to make an intrinsic decision to take responsibility.
True Empowerment
True empowerment occurs when an individual is given and accepts responsibility for a specific task or process by holding himself or herself accountable for the decisions regarding that task or process. Individuals are truly empowered when they make the intrinsic choice to take responsibility for consequences of their decisions.
But management continues to believe that people can be managed into taking responsibility. Management believes people will take responsibility even when they have little control over what is expected from them. When people are not given input into what they are going to be responsible for and held accountable to, why would they take responsibility?
People will take responsibility (or empower themselves) when they have some control over their environment and are confident in their abilities. Managers who attempt to “empower” people by giving them more responsibility and holding them accountable are simply trying to control them. The “empowerment” movement in the U.S. business culture was seen by employees for what it was: another attempt to manage results and not process.
Managers can help people empower themselves by helping them become responsible decision makers and giving them some control over what is expected from them. Managers can help people take more responsibility by concentrating more on process and less on results.
Which brings us back to this chapter’s question, “Can a manager focus on the process of helping people become better decision makers in an environment that reinforces and rewards short-term results?” Put another way, “Can a manager focus on the long-term development of his or her people while still achieving short-term objectives?”
Management Focus Continuum
So far, this book has concerned itself with two different management approaches. It contrasted the autocratic-behaviorist approach of attempting to achieve results through control to the facilitative approach of building a solid foundation for people to become better decision makers. For purposes of illustration, this book depicted these as two different and separate management approaches. In fact, most managers play somewhere in between the two. Their behaviors fall somewhere along the management focus continuum.
Management Focus Continuum
Autocratic Behaviorist |
Facilitative Leader |
Control short-term behavior |
Help people take responsibility |
Focus on results |
Focus on progress |
Use rewards and punishment |
Use fair and equitable accountability |
See people as a set of behaviors |
See people as works-in-progress |
A manager’s behavior will fall at different points along this continuum depending on three interdependent factors: the manager’s own belief system, corporate pressure, and the amount of responsibility an employee is prepared to take.
Manager’s Own Belief System
Managers who believe their job is to control short-term behavior to ensure results will use an autocratic-behaviorist approach to manage people. When managers see themselves as being “in charge” of their people, they naturally use autocratic-behaviorist approaches. They will use accountability as the main tool to keep people in line.
Managers who believe their job is to help people become better decision makers will use a more facilitative management approach. Their behaviors will be further along the management focus continuum. The controlling manager is more likely to unilaterally define measurable expectations and hold people accountable. A manager whose focus is facilitating will collaboratively define and get agreement on standards and goals. The latter will set standards as boundaries; the former will set them as hard-and-fast rules. The autocratic-behaviorist approach utilizes results-based feedback in the form of praise and criticism, while the facilitative leader will use process-based encouragement.
A manager’s belief system is one of the factors that influences at what point along the management focus continuum their behaviors fall. Another factor is corporate pressure.
Corporate Pressures
In the corporation of this still new century, there is incredible pressure on companies to achieve short-term bottom-line results. In the struggle to achieve short-term quarterly profit goals, U.S. corporations have downsized or “right-sized” to cut costs and increase productivity through technology and better utilization of resources, including human resources.
One of the ways in which companies have increased productivity is through longer work hours and harder work. It is common for workers to be expected to work longer hours with decreased or at least no relative increase in pay or benefits. Corporations are expecting more and more from employees and offering them less. Many workers believe corporations are expecting too much of them. Management expects people to work more and get less.
This ever-rising demand on employees’ time and energy has resulted in unrealistic expectations. People will not hold themselves accountable or take responsibility for unrealistic expectations. They will refuse to be “empowered” in an environment in which they have no say over what and how much is expected of them.
Corporate pressure on managers to get more out of their people forces them to take a short-term controlling approach to get results. The ability of managers to help people become better decision makers runs directly counter to ever-rising demand for more productivity.
Ever-rising expectations can be satisfied only with ever-increasing resources. People’s time and energy are limited resources. Management’s attempt to “empower” people to take responsibility for unrealistic expectations runs counter to the definition of an “empowered” corporate culture.
This short-term focus drives true empowerment out of the corporation. A manager who wants to succeed in the eyes of the corporation must achieve results. In order to achieve results he or she must get people to perform to unrealistic expectations. When people don’t agree to unrealistic expectations, the manager is left with the only management tool for this situation: control. In an attempt to manage to the end result, the manager defaults to accountability to get people to fall in line.
The result of this short-term focus is that managers feel they have little choice but to use an autocratic approach to managing. The “just do it” value system unfairly forces managers to adopt a control strategy. The more a company takes a short-term approach to business, the more managers will exhibit autocratic behaviors.
These three factors of belief system, corporate pressure, and employee ability all influence at what point a manager’s behavior will fall along the management focus continuum. “Just do it” just doesn’t.
At this point it might be easy for a manager to abdicate responsibility for adopting an autocratic-behaviorist approach to our results-driven culture. A manager might place the blame for using a controlling management style on the corporate bottom-line mentality. While there is ample evidence that corporate culture strongly influences the approach a manager takes, there is an element of personal choice as well.
A manager who makes the choice to begin the transition from an autocratic-behaviorist approach to that of a facilitative leader must start by examining his or her belief system. That is the first step for managers in taking responsibility for the part they play in their own management style.
To make the transition from an autocratic-behaviorist management approach to that of a facilitative leader, a manager will need to use a combination of results-based and process-based behaviors. Just as employees are making a transition from less responsible to more responsible, managers will need to make the transition from controlling short-term behavior to helping people become better decision makers. For this managers will need time, practice, and energy, plus a personal choice to look for longer-term improvement in employee behavior.
It is important to point out the critical role corporations play in this process. The drive toward unlimited growth and profits will eventually contribute to a workplace with expectations too high for employees to accept. Making people work in an environment in which they have little choice and ever-rising expectations will result in low employee morale. Morale does impact productivity.
Many workers feel that corporations are out of balance today. From the perspective of the employee, the most important corporate values in the 2000s are growth and profits. These values seem to supersede all others. Individual contribution, security, loyalty, and employee development become expendable when a company is in danger of missing its quarterly profit goals.
Management has come under increasing criticism for its inability to “walk its talk.” Managers say the most important resource is the human resource, but they continue to put people below the bottom line. Management’s behaviors don’t support their words. The short-term profit goals always squeeze the long-term development of people. The long-term view is in short supply.
True leaders balance a short- and long-term view of their world. But putting a person at the head of a corporation doesn’t make him or her a leader. Being in a position of authority may make a person a leader in his or her own eyes but not in the eyes of their people. The title of leader is earned not in things accomplished but in people developed. The more confidence people feel in themselves, the greater the leader.
This is the paradox: the person who wants to lead will never be a leader. To be a leader, a person must help others lead. To be a leader, a person must be willing to serve others. When a person is helping others to build confidence in themselves, he or she is leading.
Like the orchestra conductor, when a company has low morale, unhappy employees, and frustration with management, a facilitative leader will look first in the mirror to find solutions to these problems.
An autocratic behaviorist will look at the stock price.