May 28, 2013 | Blog

Are Your People Leaders as Good as you Think?

Develop Your Workforce
Engage Your People
Optimize Your Talent Strategy

Consider the following scenario:

 

Tom is a manager who pushes his team hard to hit performance targets, often leaving employees debilitated, with some leaving and others cynical and de-motivated. He argues, “It’s just business—we met our targets.” However, when we compare his customer performance results to his peer Karen, we find that she has retained more clients, while Tom has had to continuously replenish his client list with new names. Karen has retained over 90% of her team, reducing hiring and training costs, while also minimizing the steep learning curve typical of the industry. When Karen needs new hires, she usually has a waiting list of eager applicants.  Tom, though, often has to choose among those who have fewer options.

 

When we look at these two leaders, it is clear that Karen is a stronger overall value-creator for the organization. She has optimized talent investments and left those assets better than she found them — a clear contrast to Tom. Tom forces Alignment with dictatorial goal setting and infrequent or insensitive performance feedback, he rarely invests time or resources for development (Capabilities), and he often destroys the Engagement of his people in the process. 

 

The immediate manager or coach has often been heralded as the primary lever for overall talent management. However, most HR leaders in our Executive Talent Forums readily agree that immediate managers are typically stronger on the ‘what’—getting results—than on the ‘how’—achieving the results in a way that enhances the human capital assets. Our experience suggests that this lack of “how” often leads to higher staffing costs, increased turnover and lower customer satisfaction, productivity, and innovation. In today’s highly contested markets, this can mean the difference between success and failure.

 

Many organizations are failing to address this issue up-front, often waiting until the situation is so bad that termination is the only reasonable outcome. What can organizations do to fix this? 

 

Research from the Metrus Institute suggests a number of possible actions:

 

  • Promote but verify. Don’t promote until you can verify that a ‘high potential’ manager actually has the potential to optimize people—not just products, processes, and promises.
  • Pay for performance. Once promoted, make people optimization a key success criterion and reward its attainment; smart organizations today are putting a percentage of incentives behind these criteria.
  • Avoid the People Peter Principle. Don’t assume that your leaders have the right skills to optimize people just because they have been successful as individual contributors or because they have managed a unit before. Few leaders will raise their hand and say “I don’t think I have enough skills to do this the right way.” Require—yes, require—those who wish to be leaders to become proficient in people skills that will enhance the organization’s human assets.
  • Coach for success. Assign coaches and vigilantly monitor and support all leaders. Some will be naturals and need almost no coaching, while others will need strong coaching until they either ‘get it’ or move to a different role. 
  • Measure ACE.  Finally, measure leaders through the eyes of followers. If the followers are not aligned, capable or engaged, then the leader may have accomplished tasks, but at the expense of sub-optimizing talent investments.

 

William A. Schiemann is CEO and founder of Metrus Institute, the learning and research division of Metrus Group.  Dr. Schiemann and his firm are known for their pioneering work in the creation of the People Equity (ACE) talent optimization framework, strategic performance metrics and scorecards, and for strategic employee surveys that drive high performance.  In addition, he is the author of Hidden Drivers of Success: Leveraging Employee Insights for Strategic Advantage (co-authored by Jerry H. Seibert and Brian S. Morgan, SHRM 2013), The ACE Advantage, (SHRM 2012), Reinventing Talent Management (Wiley, SHRM 2009) and Bullseye! Hitting Your Strategic Targets Through High-Impact Measurement (Free Press 1999).  He has written dozens of articles for business publications and is a frequent global speaker for both public and private forums.