Last week, we covered at a high-level the Late Stage Coaching model, or the process you go through when having to fire someone. As we noted then, and we’ll say again now, this process isn’t really a “how to fire someone”, but rather, how to develop someone. In most cases, if you follow this model, you NEVER get to the step where you have to fire someone. Now, isn’t that an experience we’d all like to avoid?

This week, we review the model in a bit more detail, with some detailed examples to better illustrate the process. The entire review was a bit long, so we broke it into 2 parts, the first of which we’ll cover today. We’ll follow-on with the second part next week.

Warning: For some of you, this show may sound repetitive. To some degree, it is. If you fully understand the model AND have implemented it, we beg your forgiveness. If you haven’t, however, listen on …

As we discuss at the end of the podcast, we’ve noted that although many of our listeners really would like to engage in more meaningful discussions on management topics, the blog doesn’t lend itself too well to the task. We’ve attempted to improve the situation by implementing discussion forums on our website. You can find the discussion forums here. We’d very much appreciate it if you would direct your questions and comments to the discussion forums rather than leaving them here on the blog or sending them to us via email. There are an awful lot of good conversations happening, particularly on email, that we would like to share with the broader Manager Tools community. If you have a particular challenge or question for us, it’s very likely that others do so as well … sharing your problems/questions on the discussion forum will allow all of us to benefit and learn!

Last week, in our detailed review of the Late Stage Coaching Model, we covered steps 1 and 2 (Feedback and Systemic Feedback) of the six steps. Today we review the last 4 steps.

As a reminder, the 6 steps of the Late Stage Coaching Model are:

1. Feedback - Key point here is one of FREQUENCY versus significance. Good adjusting feedback is relaxed, it’s professional, it’s simple, it’s respectful. But it is also DELIVERED.
2. Systemic Feedback- Systemic feedback is simply feedback about an employee failing to change behavior that they’ve agreed to work on. This is a critical and often overlooked escalation of your performance coaching, and has powerful implications. Effective Managers AVERT the need for performance coaching with this step ALL THE TIME.
3. One on One Performance Discussion - In this step you simply make YOUR agenda item during your weekly one-on-one their continued failure to perform. You talk about their performance, and review all the feedback and systemic feedback, and their lack of improvement. And you ask for their input. You’re doing FOUR things here.
   1. Reconfirming that they are performing below your standards.
   2. Creating a key documentation point.
   3. Asking for comments of ANY nature that might explain the performance issue.
   4. Asking again for ideas about how THEY can improve THEIR performance.
4. Coaching - It’s possible you never get to coaching, because the feedback, systemic feedback, and direct one-on-one discussion get the point across. We hope so, we BELIEVE so… until they don’t get it. And then we coach them.
5. Formal Performance Discussion and Notification - This discussion is similar to the first one. But now, you’re doing FIVE things.
   1. Reconfirming that they are performing below your standards.
   2. Creating a key documentation point.
   3. Asking for comments of ANY nature that might explain the performance issue.
   4. Asking again for ideas about how THEY can improve THEIR performance.
   5. And finally, Notifying them about the implications of continued failure to improve.
6. Coaching Within Your Corporate Process - We can’t tell you what it is; it’s different in every company. You coach them using the MT coaching model, modifying it to allow for your organization’s final steps or system. If you’ve followed the process we’ve described, you’ll be in a great position to comply with whatever processes exist in your company prior to finally letting someone go.

As we’ve said repeatedly, you use this model ALL THE TIME, not just when you have someone you intend to let go. 99 times out of 100, behavior changes and you never get to step 6.

Questions or comments? Chat with us about them in the Discussion Forums.

Thanks to everyone participating on the Discussion Forums … we’re all learning!

You know you’re a manager - really, truly in a role of managing others - when you get frustrated that things don’t happen as fast as they used to. “Gosh, why don’t they GET IT? Can’t they SEE what kind of pressure we are (I AM) under?” What is taking SO *(@((&$^*@^Q@*#% LONG?”

That’s what all that extra pay is for.

If you’ve wondered whether it’s just YOUR team, it’s NOT. We find a lack of a sense of urgency to be pandemic. Most managers spend time complaining about this very thing when we coach them. Executives quickly forget how easy it is to stop draining the swamp as a manager when you keep getting bitten by alligators.

What can you do about it?

Well, rest assured, it’s NOT about “firing your team up” with speeches or exhortations. It’s certainly not going to happen if you “light your team up” with a shotgun blast of “you people have no sense of urgency!!!!”

You know why?

Because most managers are one of the core causes of the problem.

In this cast we tell you why, and how you can solve your problem within two weeks.

Today, we finish up our series on building a sense of urgency in your team.

Here’s a brief outline of the Sense of Urgency series:

1. Ask the right questions
2. State the deadline … don’t ask
3. Know how to combat bad answers
4. Accelerate all deadlines
5. Use passive updating
6. Feedback every time … every time
7. Use dates and times
8. Capture the deadline
9. To heck with the critical path
10. Leverage your admin

Happy Holidays, everyone! And thanks for helping make this year one of our personally rewarding years ever!

So, you’re a manager, and you’ve got a boss and a team.  Let’s assume for a moment that all of your responsibilities - your goals and objectives, rolling up all your tasks, can be represented by a bucket of balls (as in, “juggling a lot of balls.”). 

For discussion purposes, let’s just say that everybody - you, your boss, and all ten members of your team - has TWENTY balls in their bucket.  You have 5 big balls - the ones your boss might well fire you for if you drop them.  And, you have 15 more smaller balls as well (5+15=20).  These are also “important”, though not critical.  Your 20 balls keep you VERY busy - sometimes 80 hours weeks (though not often), and you take less vacation than you’re allowed, and less than your kids would like you to.

Got it?

Now, I’m not saying that this would actually ever HAPPEN …but one day your boss comes to you and presents you with another shiny big ball.  Your SIXTH BIG BALL.

What would an effective manager do?  Would you refuse?  Would you ask what balls of the other 5, or other 20, would he have you NOT DO?  Would you simply hope she wasn’t going to notice that you’re going to drop 5-6-7 of the small balls later?

To be clear, there IS a right, or most effective answer to this question.  It’s like the “does a tree falling in a forest” question you’ve probably heard. That is a zen koan, and there really IS a right answer.

Who’s first?

No, I’m not sharing the answer yet.

BUT!  Mike and I were so pleased by the responses, we’re going to deliver the answer in a podcast, coming out in the next week or two.  And, we’re going to go over all the blog comments, and address the points everyone has made.

We’re shooting it tonight, so if you have comments you want addressed, now’s the time.  We’ll do our best to include the late ones.

[This post does not endorse nor suggest the continuation of on-the-fly, spur-of-the-moment casts.  There’s still plenty of work to be done that can’t be shoehorned into a busy schedule.  Thanks - H]

Mark recently blogged with our first ever management koan, “What Would An Effective Manager Do?” It was clearly a big hit - we got 45 responses within 2-3 days. Clearly, many of you wanted to know what the answer is, and that’s great - the burning desire to get better is at the heart of all good managers. Maybe we should say “many of US” wanted to know, since even Mike posted a comment wondering about the answer! (Mark thinks that was just him being nice to everyone, putting everyone out of the misery of waiting.)

So, this is a first for us, a show driven completely by a blog post and its response. In fact, we had to juggle a lot to slide it into the lineup, and it’s certainly unusual for us to record a show and put it right up on the site.

And what’s the show about? Well, don’t you want to know what an effective manager would do? We’re going to learn the right way of thinking on this issue, and then we’re going to review every unique blog comment and provide insight as to what works and what doesn’t.

This cast shares our most important principle in The Manager Tools Effective Hiring Process: Set the Bar HIGH.

We believe that the biggest invisible organizational personnel failing is hiring poorly. It’s that simple: the vast majority of companies do a terrible job - compared to what they COULD DO EASILY - in hiring the right people.

We’ve said what follows a hundred times. We have systems to test the quality of raw materials coming in to our plants. We reject anything that is even a LITTLE off. We have non-destructive testing methods for inbound materials, and for our own manufacturing processes. Tolerances are incredibly tight. We have financial standards for investing capital that are incredibly rigorous, and monstrously difficult to prepare for at times. We have RIGID standards for EXPENSE REPORTING, for heaven’s sake.

And then, for the most important decisions we make - personnel - we leave the decision to some senior manager who’s never been trained, never been given feedback, is never held accountable, and mostly goes with her gut.

This is like trying to make a gorgeous wedding cake substituting dirt for flour, and adhering strictly to every other step in the process.

We can’t cover the entire process in one cast. But we can start.

This cast describes how to help your group become a team.

Mark gets asked all the time to lead “Team Building” sessions for clients. He steadfastly refuses.

Because “Team Building” does NOT work.

There are plenty of exercises and efforts and courses and energizers and outdoor experiential programs. And none of them work.

None of them work.

Team building doesn’t happen somewhere else. People don’t have a BFO to become members of a team. Teams really aren’t built the way houses or structures are built. Great teams HAPPEN, and great managers help them happen…but it’s not because somebody catches you in a trust fall.

This cast gives managers specific steps to take when dealing with a personal crisis of a direct report.

Mark once heard a manager say that when one of his directs started crying, he simply “gave them some tissue and walked out.” Even though he prided himself on being a tough-minded, results oriented, very successful manager, at some level he knew that his response was too callous, too cold. When Mark looked at him, mouth agape, he immediately backpedaled and said something to the effect of, “well, I’m giving them space…I don’t want them to be embarrassed . . . I appreciate their need for privacy . . . I didn’t want them thinking I was evaluating them right then.”

All delivered with that delicate edge of panic that comes from defending the indefensible. Your directs have lives outside of work, and as often as you will ask them to stay late, to do more, to answer emails on the weekend . . . every once in a while, THEIR lives are going to herniate into YOUR work.

What do you do as a manager when one of your team has a crisis? When their spouse is hurt or hospitalized? When their house burns down? When someone’s parent passes away?

We’ll tell you in this cast.