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I have written previously about the Golden Rules of Leadership. These rules, based on my own experiences as a leader, reinforced through many conversations with others in leadership, are designed to serve as practical reminders of what we as leaders need to demonstrate on a daily basis.  As leaders I’m sure we recognise that it is easier, although never easy, to lead in the good times and in calm waters; but true leaders – those who define themselves by action rather than title – demonstrate their real strength in the bad times and the stormy seas.  My best friend and I often discuss what we believe the greatest attributes of effective leaders to be, and in amongst all of the vital ingredients like being visionary, inspirational, motivational, authentic etc. is the often neglected need for the effective leader to be courageous.  It might be easy to place this descriptor with ‘famous’ leaders like Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, or Mahatma Gandhi, but what about the rest of us?  How can we as leaders demonstrate being ’courageous’ on a daily basis?

“Courageous – not deterred by danger, brave” – Oxford English Dictionary

I’d like to pose a question…  How many times has a good or excellent task performer in your team demonstrated a wholly inappropriate behaviour? What did you do?  Did you deal with it there and then or let it slide, just this once?  What about the team member who you ‘get on with’ and is a likeable individual who normally tries their best but has an off day in terms of their behaviour?  Do you let it go just the once as it must be a blip?  Finally, what about the person in your team who is a bit ‘scary’ to deal with as they have a tendency to be aggressive and/or defensive but gets the results in respect of task achievement?

For example I recall in one of my previous roles, a respected and high performing member of my team, let’s call him Tom, arrived late for work three times over a two-week period.  I knew Tom was highly committed to his job and would have spoken to me if there were any issues so I decided incorrectly that I didn’t need to address his lateness.  About a month later Jason (not his real name), a good but certainly not a top-performing member of the team arrived late one morning.  As was customary and away from the other team members I spoke to Jason about his lateness informing him that this was unacceptable behaviour and went against the team’s ‘ground rules’.  Jason sat and listened and nodded in apparent agreement before saying that he hadn’t appreciated how important his timeliness was as I hadn’t appeared to speak to Tom when he had previously been late.  Although he didn’t say this directly he was definitely giving me some feedback about my own behaviour and rightly saying that I was being inconsistent.  At the time I hadn’t considered the impact of not addressing Tom’s lateness on the other members of the team.

How many of us have been in these situations and not addressed the behaviour?  I’m using these examples as I for one know there have been times in the past when I have encountered each one of these situations and found excellent reasons for not dealing with it.  The reasons are easy to find

1. If I deal with the behaviour the results, which I’m measured on, may drop
2. It’s just not like them, they must be having a bad day
3. I haven’t got the time to deal with it now, I’ll deal with it later (but I never do)

What is it that really stops us from dealing with any one of these situations? In the cold light of day my reasons for not dealing with the behavioural stuff were actually just excuses.  I wasn’t courageous enough to deal it.

Think about the wider impact on the overall team if you don’t deal with any one of these situations.  How many times have you heard “he/she has a favourite, there’s one rule for them and one for us others; X gets away with everything; the result is all that matters etc.”?

According to Tuckman’s theory of group development these are classic indicators of Storming team behaviour.  Although people may tell you or you may think that it is not affecting the overall effectiveness and team results, in my experience it cannot help but do so.

So, to encourage us as leaders to be courageous, to do the right thing consistently in situations such as these, I have decided to coin a new golden rule:

“Never negotiate on behaviour”

Very often when giving feedback on behaviour, a leader will encounter disagreement or rationalisation from the recipient and it’s all too easy for the conversation to slip into a discussion that ends up blurring the lines of what you wanted to communicate.  To negotiate is to have a two-way conversation or to settle a discussion by mutual agreement; but are you always going to mutually agree with someone if you are telling them they have behaved inappropriately and that in order to reach the required performance standards they must change?  It’s unlikely.

Being clear in your own mind as to the standards you set is the first step.  Communicating them clearly is the second step.  Never negotiating on behaviour is the critical third step, because it’s this which will ensure that they are upheld and maintained.

Easy to say of course, but much more difficult to do.  If it is the case that you don’t know how to and are unused to giving people behavioural feedback, then there are plenty of feedback tools out there, including my own favoured E²C² tool.  Simply put, E²C² stands for Evidence / Effect / Change, or Continue.  Evidence is what has actually happened or exactly what has been said.  The Effect characterises specifically what has happened as a result or the impact of the behaviour.  Change or Continue signifies precisely what needs to be done differently or repeated, and the impact this will have.

Most of the experienced leaders I talk to state it is not their ability but their willingness to give feedback on behaviour that they fall short with. This is where we as leaders on a day to day basis need to be truly courageous.  Exhibiting this courage will provide the people we lead with the certainty and clarity they require to consistently meet both the behavioural expectations whilst also delivering the results.

In January of this year I decided to make a big career step to seek out what I really wanted, something that aligned with all of my values and provided me with the challenge I had been looking for for some time.  Whilst working for a big corporate organisation was safe, and provided a sturdy career ladder for me to climb, it wasn’t going to provide what I needed in order to truly do what I had set out to do: develop people on a wider scale.

I had been channelling thought towards my perfect job for several months, and eventually started looking around on the internet in May this year.  It wasn’t long before a small ad grabbed my attention, the ad was short, and to the point, unlike most others I had seen which all seemed over complicated with text and unnecessary job specifics, Phoenix however screamed out that they really knew what they were looking for.

I arrived for my first interview with Martin and Olly, set up and delivered a session on Leadership and Management, had an informal interview and role-played some consultancy based skills.  I left Phoenix on that Monday morning feeling refreshed at the fact that these people seemed to value a good robust recruitment process, giving even more reason for me to believe this was the job I was looking for.  Two weeks later I found myself back at Phoenix having an informal meeting with Bill Osmond, Phoenix founder/MD and Tim Holmes, Client Relationship Director for conversations which lasted roughly ninety minutes and gave both  parties a good idea of what each were about.  Two weeks later a decision was made and I would soon be starting my new job.

On my first day I arrived to find my new desk with a pile of books sat waiting for me, one of which was all about Ken Blanchard’s ‘Situational Leadership ll’, a tool which very soon I would be using as part of my training theory, but more to the point, a tool which would give me a huge reality check in terms of my own development and competency at the beginning stages of my new role.

In simple terms the Situational Leadership model establishes that an employee’s development level will vary depending on both their understanding and competence of any task they need to carry out, and also their level of commitment at any given time.  In short, the concept gives the manager an understanding of which leadership style to adopt for each employee at the different stages of their development.  E.g. if the employee is new to the task, low in competence but high in commitment, what does the leader need to display to effectively help them develop?  According to Blanchard in this situation the leader needs to do lots of showing, telling, instructing and demonstrating (direction) whilst also listening, encouraging, motivating and praising (support), although the latter to a much lesser extent as the individual at this stage of their development is already highly self – motivated. Blanchard also states that as the learners levels of competence and commitment vary in each of the four stages of the model the leader needs to vary the levels of ‘direction’ and ‘support’ they provide. The four specific leadership styles in the model are, Directing, Coaching, Supporting and Delegating. I have attached a link below to Blanchard’s site for more detail.

http://www.kenblanchard.com/Issues_Organizational_Development/Effective_Leadership_Solutions/One_to_One_Talent_Management/Management_Situational_Leadership_Training

Ok, so with situational leadership in mind, in my first 1:1 Martin asked me how I would like to go about structuring our meetings and catch ups; with me being completely unaware of my development stage in the new role I quickly told Martin that I wouldn’t need regular catch ups and would be relatively self sufficient.  What I didn’t realise however was that although highly competent in my previous position, I would now be taking on a whole new set of tasks, and that two weeks down the line I would find myself having a completely different conversation, which I might add Martin was fully aware was going to happen right from the outset.

Martin knew that despite my inherent ability to carry out my new role, there would be a realistic and necessary period of time, specific to me, in which I would be climbing back up through the development stages, bearing in mind that whenever a new task is introduced the reality is that I could be going back in to any of the development stages for that particular activity.

The type of leadership style and behaviour of the manager towards their team members is a vital ingredient to achieving high performance.  For example: being directive towards your right hand man and those who really only need low support and low direction can be counter productive, when all they may need is variety, challenge, trust, autonomy and the opportunity to teach and mentor others.  Likewise your new starter would be lost without direction and needs clear goals, boundaries, limits and frequent feedback in order for them develop, always keeping in mind that the new starter is at this stage highly committed and in some cases unconsciously incompetent.

Consequently Martin and I now have at least one catch up per week alongside regular feedback, progress and information-sharing sessions, exactly what I need at this moment in time.  It is important to remember that every member of the team will require different treatment at every stage of their development.

Situational Leadership brought my awareness back to what needed to be done in order for me to develop effectively and at the same time helped me to understand some of the common errors and judgements I had made as a manager in the past. A truly powerful leadership tool and one that will most certainly be a part of my management armour in the future.