Many years ago, my late, great friend Hyrum Smith was a member of a team that discovered the Reality Model, a brilliant visual way of describing how people look at life. Hyrum was so taken by the concepts in the model that he published a book about it and spent much of the rest of […]
Day-to-Day Coaching: The Best Way to Help People Get an A
An effective performance management system consists of three parts: performance planning, day-to-day coaching, and performance review. Most organizations, unfortunately, devote the greatest amount of time to the third part of the performance management system: performance review. This is where manager and direct report sit down and assess the direct report’s performance since the last annual […]
Monitoring and Tracking Performance
One of the most important aspects of being an SLII® leader is communicating clearly with people regarding their performance. After you’ve made performance standards clear so that each person knows what a good job looks like, you must closely monitor individual performance and provide frequent feedback. Monitoring and tracking performance is a key directive leadership […]
Establishing Timelines
If you are a regular reader of my HowWeLead.org blog posts, you’ll know I’m writing a series of blog posts highlighting each of the micro skills (also called leadership behaviors) used by an effective SLII® leader. This time, I’m covering Establishing Timelines, a Directive leadership behavior. The First Secret of The One Minute Manager is […]
A Fresh Look at SMART Goals
If you are familiar with SLII®, our company’s leadership program for powering inspiring leaders, you know that effective SLII® leaders are highly skilled in the two primary areas of leadership behavior: Directive and Supportive. We define Directive leadership behaviors as “actions that shape and control what, how, and when things are done” and Supportive leadership […]
Three Steps to Becoming the Best Boss Ever
A couple of months ago I sent out a Facebook post with a photo of a briefcase-carrying woman jumping a hurdle, along with the headline, “Hire smart people, train them properly, then get out of their way.” That post went viral, garnering thousands more views than my usual posts. Something about the message really resonated […]
Managing the Ups and Downs of Performance
Every year we have a Final Four basketball week at our company. Teams of three from departments around the company compete with each other for the championship. We also have a free throw contest from the foul line. The prize goes to the person who hits the most out of 20. In the past, I’ve […]
NATO Golf
With spring around the corner, I find my mind turning to golf. I love to play golf. I’ve always tried to not take it too seriously and remember that it’s just a game—but I didn’t really love to play until I started to use an approach called NATO golf. In case you haven’t heard of […]
What do you do with a high performing employee whose values don’t line up with the organization?
It’s just a fact of human nature – Not everyone has the same set of values. But what should you do if you discover that one of your high performers is a values mismatch with your organization? There are two aspects to evaluating people: One is performance and the other is citizenship—whether people are operating […]
Feedback is Great Motivation
If you went around your office and asked each person, “Are you doing a good job?” what would be the answer? Would most people respond by saying either “I don’t know” or “I think so”? And if their answer was, “Yes, I think so,” and your follow-up question was, “How do you know?” would you […]