For the next several months the DES newsletter will contain leadership ideas developed in the book Monday Morning Leadership by David Cottrell. The book uses stories to illustrate leadership concepts. Although the book is designed to assist those in management positions improve and develop leadership skills, the concepts illustrated should be broadly interpreted and can be used by everyone. Please take time to consider how the ideas presented could be beneficial to you. 

Thank you, Greg Pulte for preparing these each month.

The Third Monday:

Escape from Management Land

The third installment asks readers to get out of management land and to:

• Get in touch with your people.
• Realize that your job is not to lower the bottom by adjusting and accommodating the falling stars. You should be raising the top by recognizing and rewarding the superstar behaviors.   

It is critical for managers to realize that: ‘People normally quit because their manager is not meeting their needs. People quit people before they quit companies.’

What does the good manager need to do in order to maintain excellent employees, coach rising stars, and remove underachievers?

First, hire good employees. Managers must not become lazy in their hiring. Taking more time to interview and assess candidates up front prevents future difficulties and disappointments.

A serious concern in any organization is that good employees are asked to do more and more while others are being asked to do less. At times this situation can result in good employees feeling abused because they are good employees. The outcome of this is that good employees are punished for being good employees while the lower performing employees are being rewarded for doing less and less.

Second, coach every member of the team to become better. Provide adequate feedback and direction to employees. Do not fall into the trap of assuming that employees are happy working without much feedback. A manager’s responsibility is to pay attention to the individual employees needs and to encourage their development through positive and useful feedback.

Third, de-hire the people who are not carrying their share of the load. Ignoring performance issues of individual employees has a negative effect on the rest of the team. What begins as one negative and cynical employee can become an entire team of negative and cynical employees.

One of the main things a leader must do is to eliminate confusion. Confusion can paralyze a team of employees. Something that contributes to the team’s confusion is a trap many managers fall into – the trap of management land. In management land things are not always what they seem and it can sometimes be very difficult to escape from management land.

In management land, simple things often become complex and people can easily lose perspective. Managers begin to think the games others play are what are most important.

So what is management land? ‘In management land, people are rewarded for saying only the things managers want to hear. It is difficult to discover the truth. Management land can be described as confusing, frustrating, and sometimes comical to those on the outside. Managers must escape from management land and get in touch with their people.   

On most teams there are three types of employees:

• Superstars- people who have experience, knowledge and desire to be the very best at their jobs.
• Middle stars – they may not have the experience to be a superstar yet or they once were superstars but have subsequently lost their motivation to be the best.
• Falling Stars are the ones who do as little as they can get away with. 

A typical team has about 30% superstars, 50% middle stars, and 20% falling stars. The pitfall of superstars is that if you keep piling work on your superstars then you should not expect them to continue to be superstars. Certainly some superstars will always be superstars regardless of the workload; but others will be beaten down into middle stars because of the additional work you pile on or from the failure to appropriately acknowledge there hard work.  

Ask yourself this question. What is the minimal acceptable level of performance for the three types of employees? Many might say the minimal acceptable level of performance is in the middle 50%, however the correct answer is the bottom 20%. The fact that people in the bottom level are still on the team implies that their behavior must be acceptable.

In fact, many managers have fallen in to the trap of rewarding their falling stars by giving them less work while acknowledging them with decent performance reviews! ‘When you do that, you should expect more people to fall into the falling star category. Why not do less when there are still rewards? Your job is not to lower the bottom by adjusting for and accommodating the lowest performing employees. You should be raising the top by recognizing and rewarding superstar behaviors!  You simply cannot ignore performance issues and expect your superstars to stick around for very long!