Category: leadership

Review: The Strengths-Focused Guide to Leadership
If you want a practical manual to understanding how to harness strengths, for you and your team, this book is a great place to start, as it:
- introduces the key concepts of strengths
  - provides the research base for more inquisitive readers
  - illustrates with narratives
- prompts you with a range of exercises and action points
- explains how to weave strengths into your practice as a leader.
What really sets this book apart is the emphasis on practicality. Numerous exercises help you engage with the ideas. There are questions, forms and questionnaires for you to use. The book looks at embedding strengths in all your work, including coaching, team meetings, recruitment and appraisals. So even if you know the value of using strengths, this is still a worthwhile read.

A further great feature is the use of dialogues, showing the ideas in action (e.g. a coaching session transcript) or as two alternative ‘scripts’ – one using strengths, the other weakness. These stories keep you grounded in reality.

The whys, whats and hows of using strengths

The authors define strengths as something that:

They show the advantage of working with strengths: that you are doing more of what you are best at. They set out the alignment between using strengths and increased sense of authenticity and purpose, increasing satisfaction and engagement. This naturally leads into a more productive cycle, with faster and better results.

For any readers averse to leaving a weakness-focussed approach, the authors provide both the evidence for focussing on strengths, and also how to address weaknesses with a positive mindset.

The MORE model

My strengths: To identify your own strengths, the authors offer five different methods: strength spotting, weakness spotting, a 5 steps strengths map, 360 degree feedback and online strengths assessments. They provide the exercises, questions and examples to help you through whichever of these methods you prefer to use.

Roarty and Toogood suggest 8 ways to develop your strengths:

They also provide 6 ways to manage your weaknesses. To align your goals and strengths, they suggest usual SMART objectives should rather be SMARTIE – adding Important and Energising.

Others’ strengths: The book suggests approaches to introduce strengths as a concept and to support your team in identifying their strengths.

Regular conversations: To embed strengths into daily practice, the authors provide checklists and questions which embody the three principles that will help you develop a strengths mindset:
- start with an outcome focus
- focus on what’s working
- manage weakness from strength
They advise how to use this mindset in one-to-one conversations, development planning, team meetings and coaching: interventions where a strengths-focus has great rewards.

Employee processes: Roarty and Toogood provide specific advice for a strength-based approach for performance appraisals, development discussions and recruitment. Particularly interesting is their approach for adapting to institutional reality: that while you may be required to use certain forms, competencies or expected approaches, you can still use a strengths mindset and techniques to provide a better outcome.

Leadership and teams

The book ends by providing the advice, evidence and resources to use strengths in two key challenges: creating a high-performing team, and in leading change. While specific examples are given, the advice reflects the key messages delivered previously, as detailed above.

You can buy The Strengths-focused guide to leadership, by Mike Roarty and Kathy Toogood, on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist.

She helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and by developing skills and strategies for improvement.

If you’d like help or advice on using strengths – such as implementing the MORE model, helping you find or use your strengths, or adopt a coaching approach, then please get in touch.

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15th July 2018
Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach
Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach

Do you want to help your team members improve their performance? Do your one-to-one meetings often end up with you giving all the answers and telling them what to do? Do you want your team to be more self-sufficient and empowered?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, then I suggest you learn how to coach. Increasingly seen as an essential management tool, coaching supports people to give their very best regardless of their current performance level. Coaching is focussed on helping them find solutions themselves, rather than the manager providing direction or advice. As a coach, and a trainer of coaches, I’m going to share with you some of my key ideas on why all managers and leaders should be coaching.

1. Coaching myths

We’ll cover aspects of how to coach later, but first, let’s look at some of the reasons why managers don’t coach, and debunk these myths.

Myth 1: “It takes too long; it takes less time if I just tell them the answer or what to do.”

You may worry that coaching is too time consuming, but it takes no more time overall than many other management practices. Crucially coaching builds capacity in your team to resolve their own issues – or to come to you with solutions, rather than questions. This saves you time in the medium to long run

Myth 2: “I’m not a professional coach, surely an external person needs to do this work?”

While there is real value in independent coaching, anyone can add a coaching approach to their management toolkit. I’ve trained hundreds in coaching skills, and you’d be surprised how quickly people can take it on board. David Rock defines coaching as ‘the art and science of facilitating positive change’ – and if you think about it, that’s what good managers are all about. The aim of coaching, and the skills you need, are aligned with being a positive and supportive manager: meeting people where they are, then helping them build on their skills, strengths and experiences, addressing shortcomings, finding solutions and identifying strategies to meet agreed targets.

Myth 3: “I’m the manager, I have the right answers, I should always share them.”

You should if there is only one right answer. But allowing your colleagues to maintain ownership, think issues through and work out their own solutions helps to get the best from your people. If you focus on goals and outcomes, your team can be more creative. Sir John Whitmore argues that coaching encourages acceptance of responsibility, which results in a commitment, in turn optimising employees’ performance.

A coaching approach helps establish boundaries around their responsibility for delivering outcomes and resolving issues. Your role is to work with people not for them – helping them work towards solutions rather than micro-managing. It helps when people own their goals.

Telling people the right answers isn’t always effective. Think about training sessions: a significant U.S. study found that the application of learning following a training course was around 22%. The majority simply didn’t put anything into practice. But when training was combined with coaching or some sort of a follow-up, it really helped people put their learning into practise. Suddenly, application went up to 90% – so with an approach of coaching rather than telling you could generate a much better return on your time investment.

2. When to use a coaching approach

PWC’s Global Coaching Study for the International Coach Federation found that coaching creates improvements in areas such as self-confidence, relationships, communication skills, work-life balance, work performance, business management and team effectiveness.

So, is there any occasion when you would not want your team to have those benefits? I’d encourage you to make coaching part of your daily management skills – but especially when there are high stakes pieces of work, big projects, or issues where you’re carrying an awful lot of responsibility.

Coaching can be delivered just in time; you can talk about a project just as it arises. Coaching is targeted, it can be specific to your organisation and the type of work or individual that you are talking to. It can build on their experience, knowledge, and skills while addressing their specific challenges.

By adding a coaching approach to your practice you can look forward to reaping its many personal and organisational benefits.

3. What a coaching approach looks like

Now we’re going to consider how you would start coaching. You can coach anytime, anywhere. Your coaching conversations don’t need to be formal or take more than a few minutes. It is however distinguished from other management activity by two key points:
- it is solution-focussed
- it leaves ownership and accountability with the staff member or coachee.
To achieve this, coaching involves asking insightful questions and providing reflection without giving advice or direction.

3.1 Start with the outcome

Start conversations with ‘what do we want to achieve?’, ‘what do you need?’. Encourage your staff member to articulate where they are aspiring to be or what an ideal outcome would look like.

Then you look at the current situation: ‘This is our goal, and this is where we are at the moment. Let’s talk about how we bridge that gap.’

Next, encourage the coachee to come up with potential solutions or options. Rather than providing advice, ask questions to help them work issues out for themselves: ‘What options do you have?’ ‘What do we need to do to make this project a success?’ ‘How are you going to marshal your skills, experience, and resources to achieve it?’ and the magic coaching question: ‘What else?’ Aim for as many options as they can gather – I often find that the really innovative solutions only emerge once I’ve exhausted all the obvious ideas.

Ensure that there is a specific set of outcomes or actions from the coaching conversation. The coachee needs to choose and commit to their own next step to draw real benefit from this approach.

This basic process I’ve described has been worked up into a number of coaching models. There’s not much difference between them beyond which acronym you prefer.

3.2 It is not about you – ownership and accountability belong with the coachee

In coaching the question is always, ‘what are you going to do’, and then ‘what support might you need to succeed’? Accountability and ownership rests with the coachee or individual whose job or project you are discussing.

Your role is to facilitate their thinking, not to solve the team member’s issues, or do their job for them. Understanding this distinction is remarkably freeing and allows for better quality conversations. It will be tough at first, but try hard not to be directive.

Listen to the other person, rather than your thoughts about how you might respond. What is really important to them? What are their challenges? What opportunities are they seeing? What next steps do they want to take?

When encouraged to come up with our own solutions, we maintain ownership and accountability, and feel much more motivated to follow through than when we are told what to do.

3.3 Provide support and challenge

Provide support and help where it is needed. Ask your team member to articulate what they see as the main challenge in a particular project and how you can support them in overcoming it.

Encourage them to identify the resources available to them; or similar situations or tasks where they have previously been successful.

Praise people for difficulties they’ve chosen to tackle, for taking ownership and accountability or for doing a great job of resolving their own issues.

Also provide constructive challenge. If you hear ‘We can never do that because…’ ask them, ‘Are you sure? Can you tell me what it would take for us to actually be able to do it? Could we do something differently to enable us to achieve this?’ Challenging is often a crucial part of coaching conversations.

4. Coaching is a crucial management skill that you should have

So you can see that coaching has wide-ranging benefits for your team and you – and is a great return on your time invested.

There’s no reason why you can’t go ahead and put into practice the ideas I’ve shown you in your next one-to-one or team meeting. If you’re interested, and would like some support in how to coach effectively, then I’d suggest two options. You could learn by being coached yourself, or you could find some training on coaching skills.

If you want to get the most from your people, if you want to help them develop, then coaching is a great skill to use – as after all, personal growth takes place at the intersection of ownership, accountability, support and challenge – and that is what a good coach provides.

Eszter Molnar Mills is a highly experienced and qualified leadership coach, and has taught coaching skills to hundreds of managers. Eszter and her team at Formium Development provide training and support to managers so they can get the best out of themselves, their teams and their organisations.

How we can help you

Coaching: if you’re looking for someone to help you to find solutions for your goals, we have a number of coaches available for phone/video conference coaching. Click here for more details.

Training: if you want more help on using a coaching approach as part of your management toolkit, then get in touch about our in-house workshops on Coaching Skills for Managers.

Webinar: People who join up to our newsletter get access to a bunch of helpful information and resources. This includes periodic access to our webinar on Coaching.

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11th July 2018
Book Review: The Positive Organization by Robert E Quinn

So many business books leave you wondering “…but how does that work in reality?” That’s not a problem with The Positive Organization – this short book (less than 160 pages from cover to cover) is packed with ideas, examples, case studies and practical exercises, written in an engaging and straightforward style.

Throughout, Quinn challenges us to consider a different way of thinking, and to think about how we can effectively participate in building a positive organisation. A key strength of the book is that it has actionable lessons for all, regardless of job role or responsibility, from board room to shop floor. Each chapter concludes with a tool to use with teams in self-assessment and development, as well as questions to encourage the reader to reflect and set aspirations, to deepen learning.

The central premise of the book is that building a positive organisation requires accountability and authenticity, that for it to be successful it has to be emergent and self-generating. This approach is built on listening, consultation and empowerment at all levels.

What marks this book apart from many others is both the effectiveness of Quinn’s model, as well as the Positive Organization Generator – over 100 real-life examples of how organisations have successfully increased their positivity.

Mental Maps and bilingualism

Quinn suggests that the culture of an organisation can be summarised in a mental map – an indication of what a company believes and assumes, covering domains such as Motivation, Status and Change. Most organisations, and most leaders, operate using what Quinn calls a Conventional Mental Map, a top-down, traditional hierarchy. He contrasts this with the more complex Positive Mental Map, focused more on networks and relationships, and a focus on the common good and authentic communication.

However, this is not a binary state – Quinn suggests a successful leader needs to be ‘bilingual’ able to speak the language of both maps depending on the need of the people they are working with, to find the right tools for the right occasion.

A question of balance

Quinn provides us with a further analysis of organisational culture – the Framework of Organizational Tensions. Quinn groups organisational characteristics into two opposing lists, for example Individual Accountability and Cohesive Teamwork. If taken to extremes either of these positive characteristics could be negative – conflict on the one hand or group-think on the other. To illustrate the need to maintain balance between these positive forces, Quinn separates each pair on opposing sides of a disc, with an outer ring of negative forces that may arise if the positive force is over-developed.

This idea of tension and balance is crucial to Quinn – organisations are not static, they are dynamic, and to effect positive change we have to consider the whole system, that positives can turn into negatives.

A call to action

Having developed these models, Quinn turns to a number of key issues in developing a positive organisation, in chapters that focus on how to drive organisations forward by developing and promoting authenticity, creating a sense of purpose, fostering bottom-up change and collaborative development. He uses a range of interesting and relevant examples, referring back to the models at every stage.

In these sections he is challenging and insightful on the role of the individual, on our willingness to work for the common good, our ability to leave our ego and control behind when trying to develop an organisation that thrives. He is also realistic about human nature, and how difficult meaningful change and personal authenticity may be, but makes clear the benefits of developing leadership capabilities and organisational positivity.

Over to you

Quinn concludes by sharing with the reader his Positive Organization Generator. Designed to confront sceptics and resistance, he provides 100 examples of where an organisation has made positive change (from a range of industries, and with links to further articles on each of them). This is an amazing resource that gives readers a real opportunity to understand “how it works in reality”. Rather than just adopting these ideas, his instruction to readers is to re-invent them – to be inspired by the examples, extract the principle and re-imagine it for your own context, moulding and adapting to fit.

Robert E. Quinn’s website www.bob-quinn.com provides you with the resources from the book, including the Positive Organization Generator.

Or you can buy the book from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

For more ideas you can also follow his daily blog: www.thepositiveorganization.wordpress.com

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Formium Development helps individuals and organisations to harness their strengths and improve their performance and culture. We know change can be hard, so we can bring our expertise to help you with organisational development – such as implementing the ideas in The Positive Organization.

Click here if you’d like more information on how we can help you and your team analyse, assess, challenge, innovate, communicate and develop.

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5th July 2018
7 questions for impactful leadership

Review of the Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

Your team sometimes just need a bit of support to shine. You can provide this support through changing your leadership approach to coaching.

Helping people to find their own solutions is more impactful than giving advice, providing rules or direction. You can coach anytime, anywhere, and with the 7 simple questions that Michael Bungay Stanier suggests for supporting your team, your session will be both easy and effective.

The Coaching Habit is a lean, inspiring and practical book. In the first few chapters you can learn about habit building and change in order to make the move from the directive habit of a lifetime. The book then outlines the benefits of coaching before you get the tools, the questions and ways of putting them into practice.

The following seven chapters are about the seven essential question you should ask in order to help your colleague to identify and solve their own difficulties. Bungay Stanier added exercises between the questions to help leaders master asking them effectively.

Michael Bungay Stanier’s book is a practical, engaging read encouraging immediate application. It is packed with useful resources and exercises, and should have a place on every leaders’ bookshelf.

We had the privilege of interviewing Michael on the coaching habit, so you can also hear him talk about the habit changing process and how to do more great work.

The Coaching Habit is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

7th September 2016
Impactful women leaders

Worldwide, at the lower levels of organisations over half of the staff members are female but if you look higher the number of women shrinks. Therefore, we’d like to share with you list of 5 impactful leaders who just happen to be female.

Sheryl Sandberg – The COO of Facebook and founder of the Lean In Foundation. The non-profit organisation is part of a movement to develop a more equal world – as detailed in her book, Lean In – and supports women in the workplace and through empowerment groups.
Ann Francke – Author of the FT Guide to Management and CEO of the Chartered Management Institute, a non-profit organisation aiming to create better led and managed organisations, through creating more qualified managers and establishing management as a true profession.
Meg Whitman – Business executive, currently the President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and also the Chairwoman of HP Inc. A former manager at Disney and Hasbro, she is still best known for leading the online auction site, eBay.
Tamara Box – The chair of the Financial Industry Group and the head of Structured Finance at Reed Smith, and worldwide acknowledged expert in strategic financial advice. Tamara is passionate about engaging millennials and women in the professional world. Also, she is one of our autumn interviewees.
Carolyn McCall – The CEO of EasyJet is one of the business leaders who has been asked to join the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group – the body that advises the PM and the Government on business difficulties.

24th August 2016
#Girlboss review

Sophia Amoruso is an interesting and inspiring millennial. She is the founder of one of the fastest-growing retailers on the planet, Nasty Gal and the author of #Girlboss, a book about her and the company’s story. The business began with selling off vintage clothing and accessories on eBay, currently she is the leader of internationally recognised brand and business.
#Girlboss isn’t a typical self-help personal development handbook; it’s more like a good peptalk given by a person who transformed her hobby into an outstanding company and shares her real life experiences through the pages.

“A #GIRLBOSS is someone who’s in charge of her own life. She gets what she wants because she works for it. As a #GIRLBOSS, you take control and accept responsibility.” – says Amoruso at the beginning of the publication.
This book is far better as a story than as a business guide – which is probably why Netflix is turning it into a TV show.

#Girlboss is a combination of a memoir, a manifesto and a business book. It won’t explain to the reader how to reach success but it can give a few ideas and it’s definitely a great reading experience. Amoruso’s book could inspire young people who are thinking about setting up a business.
The book is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

10th August 2016
Where does the courage come in?

I fairly recently went to an event on Women’s Leadership Careers organised by the Chartered Management Institute’s (CMI) Women in Management (WiM) Network. The keynoter was none other than CMI’s CEO Ann Francke, an remarkably dynamic and engaging speaker.

Ann shared her wealth of knowledge and experience about progressing in the ranks of organisations as a female member of staff. Among the many things she referred to was the 3 C’s: Competence, Confidence and Connections – the important components in order to get noticed and to ensure your mark in your field. She recommends keeping a list of your competencies and your accomplishments. Have confidence in yourself – avoid the tiara syndrome, i.e. waiting for someone to notice you, and the sorry skirts, connoting apologising for yourself. And the ever important C – connections – reach out to people. Look for colleagues and managers who can guide you, advise you and “sponsor” you.

As I was taking all this in, words of Sir Winston Churchill rang so true: “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities . . . because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” I add ‘courage’ as the 4th C to Ann’s list.

Courage could be the stepping stone to acknowledging your competencies, to speak up to the person at the office, who you want to connect with. And the courage to leave when you know something is not working – it could be a job that does not nurture your capacities, a relationship that does not support you in achieving your targets. It takes courage to review a past project and to be honest with yourself about what went great and what could have been done better.

It requires courage to lead a team, to disband a team and to implement change when it is needed. However, courage is not about being abrasive. It is very much about being gently assertive with yourself and taking that one extra step – making your competencies list or drawing on your confidence to connect with a colleague. After all, Churchill also purported that “courage is what it requires to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”

Reetu Kansal

27th July 2016
Celebrating women in leadership

Against the backdrop of Theresa May taking office as the UK’s second ever female Prime Minister and Hillary Clinton potentially becoming the first female President, women at work are still paid significantly less than men and there are fewer of them the higher up the management ranks you look.

Yet there are some shining examples of women at the helm of corporations, their own companies and communities.

As an increasing number of female leaders find their way to the top of organisations and find their voice, one thing is clear: enabling women in leadership benefits all.

It is not a binary or a win-lose issue. Female leaders do not succeed against their male counterparts, they succeed alongside them and with men. Women’s progression benefits all, including male employees as gender balanced organisations are more inclusive, better places to work as well as being more successful.

I also strongly feel that the way forward for women is not be more like men, but to add a different, complementary voice to the conversation. Where everyone is emboldened to be his or her authentic best self, the organisation truly benefits from culmination of all talents within. Over the coming weeks, we will showcase some exceptional female leaders on this blog. You can also access the Women in Leadership issue of People & Purpose the Positive Leadership Journal: http://peopleandpurposejournal.com/issues

13th July 2016
The best LinkedIn Influencers

LinkedIn is the most known professional social networking platform; it encourages the world’s leading thinkers and innovators to be Influencers. As “leaders in their industries and geographies”, they explore news and trending topics. We recommend to follow these 7:

Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management resource, and its CEO is an excellent Influencer to follow. He often publishes interesting and colourful pieces on leadership, management, success, career and other topics.

Gretchen Rubin
A best-selling author who also has a fantastic podcast on habits and happiness. In her various posts on LinkedIn, she gives tips, tricks and ideas to shape habits and ‘boost the happy factor’.

Daniel Goleman
Psychologist, prize-winning author and science journalist, he regularly posts insightful writings on the topics of emotional intelligence and leadership; on how to be a more effective leader and self-aware.

Bernard Marr
Best-selling author, keynote speaker and leading business and data expert, Marr publishes posts mostly on leadership and Big Data. He reflects on popular topics and connects them with his fields of expertise; who knew that Big Data and Valentine’s day can work together in a post.

Jeff Haden
Business and leadership ghost-writer, speaker, contributing editor at Inc. Magazine. He publishes pieces on hiring, success, leadership and various business topics.

Liz Ryan, CEO of Human Workplace
The founder and CEO of the publishing, career coaching and consulting firm has an engaging and inspiring writing style. Ryan writes about job hunting, toxic workplaces, careers and much more.

Bruce Kasanoff
The career coach and social media ghost-writer posts about how can people achieve success, how to be a great leader and bring out the strengths of our people, how to find talent and more. His articles are not only interesting but humorous too.

Who influences you the most on LinkedIn?

Tweet us at @FormiumLtd

29th June 2016
Doing good, doing business

Social enterprise is a dynamic and also motivating way to do business, it’s an interesting and fast growing sector, a movement not only in the UK but around the globe.

Social enterprises are businesses trading to address social problems, improve communities, people’s quality of life or the environment. It seems the same as charity work but it is different. These organisations make and do things to make profits like every other business, but they are reinvesting their profits to make even more good. They do this in various ways: reinvesting in community projects, providing services for people who otherwise might not get them, or creating jobs for people who would otherwise be left out from work. That’s what Unseen Tours did, does and will do.

Unseen Tours is a prize-winning, not-for-profit social enterprise in London. Presently, they offer 6 alternative sightseeing tours through the capital’s most vibrant and exciting neighbourhoods- Brick Lane, Brixton, Camden, Covent Garden, London Bridge and Shoreditch-, led by homeless and previously homeless guides.

“We never wanted to be a charity, we wanted to make profit and reinvest that money, that’s why we are a social enterprise.”– says Faye Shields, the director.
Everything started in 2010 as a project by Sock Mob Events, an informal volunteer network– so called simply because through regular weekly walks these people offered socks, food and friendship for men and women living on the streets of London.

Their guides earn a living through the tours. They directly get 60% of the ticket sales. And what about the other 40%? It’s also reinvested, out of that 40% the guides also receive their travel and mobile top-ups every month and the remainder is used for essential operational costs. Any profit Unseen Tours makes is directly reinvested into the enterprise to engage more guides and widen the scope of the tours.

People are needed to run an organisation. The team that works behind the scenes of the successful social enterprise is formed of volunteers. They fit volunteering around their full-time job responsibilities to help making Unseen Tour a success.

The enterprise works like a real organisation; they have a director, the different tours have coordinators, they even have a person to manage their social media.
Unseen Tours offers a one-of-a-kind experience of London and unique insight into the capital’s life whilst giving visibility and voice to people who often feel unseen and unheard.

Unseen Tours is a social enterprise with great purpose– to change perceptions of the homeless and to provide an income to individuals who might otherwise be excluded from work. They are doing good but also business. With their business strategy, so far they have helped 20 homeless or formerly homeless people back on their feet.

To find out more about Unseen Tours and to book a tour visit their website here. Take part and win prizes in their newest campaign, share your unseen story with #MyUnseenStory on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

1st June 2016
5 of the Best … Quotes on strengths

Formium Development team believe in a strength-based leadership approach. Leaders should concentrate on developing strengths instead of fixing weaknesses. Practicing a positive approach will likely help you and your organisation to become a lot more authentic and also more effective. Read our most-liked quotes on strengths:

What’s your favourite quote on strengths? Share with the online community in the comment section, or tweet us your favourite quote @FormiumLtd!

4th May 2016
Ensure that people know what is expected of them

When I talk to managers and leaders, the theme of high performance is a frequent topic of conversation. We can all agree that being an excellent organisation and delivering exceptional products or services are very important, but does everyone we work with know what we actually mean by excellence in the day-to-day?

6 methods to set obvious expectations for high performance
Too often, managers seem to lead through mental telepathy. Without clearly communicated expectations– in terms of standards or the milestones against which we analyze our progress – team members may not know what to do and how to do it. This can result in uncertainty, undermining effective teamwork, initiative and productivity.
Properly setting expectations for employees or team members is a critical dimension in quality workplaces, according to a large research of managers undertaken in the 1990s by The Gallup Organization. Underneath are a few ideas on setting clear expectations that will set standards for excellence and outcomes.
1. Begin with creating a compelling goal. Describe and explain what you want the end result to look like. Not just what you want done, but the purpose and the results you want to achieve when the project is finished and the responsibility of everyone in its achievement. People want to know that their job, whether large or small, makes a difference.
2. Talk about what you mean by “excellent performance”. This step is needed to make the vision ‘actionable’ and translate it into tangible performance measures. Set metrics where possible, paint a complete picture of the requirements you are expecting. Refer to your performance review form or competency framework for behavioural standards.
3. Concentrate on the required outcomes, instead of on the exact steps you want your people to take. Think of this as coaching rather than controlling. Encouraging your people to design their own way of delivering positive outcomes allows each team member to use their strengths to their fullest potential.
4. Provide regular feedback. The yearly appraisal or performance review is insufficient and often too late to let staff members know how and whether they are meeting your expectations. Give feedback along the road: define the context, refer to the vision and give your reasons for the feedback. Next plan for a way forward, ask for more or less of what you observed. Take a coaching, rather than disciplinarian approach. The more two-way communication, the greater the clarity around the expectations.
5. Give positive encouragement. Until you are particularly experienced at giving feedback, don’t use the ‘sandwich’ of positive– constructive– positive comments. As Ken Blanchard suggest in One Minute Manager, catch employees doing things right and you’ll get even more of it.
6. Give people the flexibility to perform well. As soon as the expectations are clear get out of the way and let people to meet them. Having set clear standards, milestones or due dates, every member of your team will have the ability to track their own progress, check whether they are meeting the milestones and behavioural standards. This approach also allow individuals be accountable for delivering their own work, so that they can course correct where needed or stay on track to make their full contribution.

To find out more about Positive Leadership view our webinar.

26th April 2016