Assessing leadership performance is similar to swimming:
You cannot assess competency with a written test.
Our key premise is that the most effective and fastest way to improve performance throughout an organization is to improve the effectiveness of leadership, one leader and one department at a time. Meanwhile, it seems the key premise of some leaders is: “Improve who? Improve me? Why me?” Continue reading
After measuring the performance of hundreds of Healthcare Systems, Healthcare Performance Systems came to the same conclusion that Google did measuring 1 big organization (themselves). Google called it PROJECT OXYGEN — they couldn’t survive without it. They and we both found the single most important vital factor in an organization’s success and to an employee’s performance is . . . Leadership.
The best way to make employees more effective, improve operating margins and create incredible customer/patient outcomes is improve leadership effectiveness.
And the best way to improve leadership effectiveness is to align leadership talent with the demands of each position. Doing this requires that business leaders have sophisticated performance measurement tools to more easily differentiate and interpret information.
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Introduction to the Eye Chart Suite of Tools
Business leaders don’t relate well to and are not motivated by statistical coefficients and academic correlations. They need practical and applied causal links and measures of performance that they can readily see and relate to logically and emotionally. Do the measurement tools need to be scientifically valid and reliable? Continue reading
1. Do they respect you
Why are you giving advice to this leader? Is it necessary to help improve their performance? Do you have a stake in their success? Does the leader trust your motives, your interest in their success, and your knowledge about the subject. Do they have reason to believe you have some expertise in the subject? The confidence the leader has in your genuine concern for them, your expertise about the subject, and your common interest in their success will greatly influence their willingness to listen and act on your coaching guidance. Do you have the authority to enforce negative or positive consequences for this leader? If so, you can get compliance even without the above considerations, but you will get much better and longer lasting results if the above are all true.
2. Have they bought into the quantitative assessment of their performance and agree with the feedback?
If the measurements show the leader’s performance is very good, employees buy-in easily; so if you are getting disagreement, we can assume the measurements show performance shortcomings. However, the measurement tools have been carefully built over a long time to be resilient. They come from extremely diverse observations and this diversity provides extremely accurate placement. The absolute number may not be perfectly accurate to the decimal point, but the ranking information is accurate and reliable. Receiving this news, if it is bad, drives a person through the stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. Respect this process but be firm. Use hard metrics to verify the measurements and accelerate the process, but be tactful and kind (Please see the 5 Stages of Grief)
3. Do they agree with the qualitative assessment regarding the upside benefits of improving and the downside consequences of not improving?
The next step in this process is to gain buy-in. Change is difficult. Do you have the evidence or experience to justify your prediction of a better future state if the leader undertakes the change you expect? Does the leader agree that if their performance changed, the results would be better for the entire organization? Continue reading
DELIVERING A COMPELLING COACHING CONVERSATION
Setting the stage for a coaching conversation
C3 Coaching Conversation Whitepaper
Public speaking is difficult. Many people envision an audience filled with listeners who may object to the message. Now imagine a focused conversation with a single person who you know you will see every day after and who you know will hate the message, because the message is they have to change.
There may be a wide perception gap between the leader and the employee about the need to change or a significant misinterpretation about the feedback itself, or there may just not be a true motivation to make a change. The compelling coaching conversation must overcome these obstacles.
4 major elements of a coaching conversation
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10 Step Coaching Guide Whitepaper
1. Assess the person’s demonstrated talent or leadership ability
Success Profiles categorizes demonstrated leadership ability as A, B, C, or D.
An A player is a leader who is successful at what they are doing, have been successful in the past, and very likely to be successful even if suddenly placed in a more demanding job. They are skilled, dependable, consistent, energetic, and expansive. By expansive, we mean they teach and inspire others to also be successful. By transferring their talents, they become a true force multiplier for your organization.
The B Leader is also successful but not as over-the-top as the A player. They may take some grooming before being ready for the next step. They may not be quite as consistent as the A leader, or as imaginative. They may need a little more supervision, but there is nothing wrong with their ability or their dedication and they are likely to be successful in all but the most demanding situations.
The C Leader has significant issues in some areas of performance, but can, and often overcomes them, especially in easier situations. With more direct supervision, they can be completely successful in smaller jobs, or have good moments even in difficult situations, although preferably that would not be a long term solution for the organization.
The D Leader is a leader who only shows glimpses of leadership ability, even with constant supervision. They are usually only a successful leader when their leader is essentially doing his job for him by constantly feeding him ideas, alternatives, and guiding his performance on a short leash. This leader can be successful in an easy job. They are highly likely to fail in a difficult job and at all times are a significant source of concern for the senior leader.
Mark Twain once apologized to a friend for sending him a long letter by saying “I didn’t have time to send you a short one”. Of course he meant he was writing to his friend as he thought, instead of taking the time to edit his thoughts, and especially not to test them for practicality. Success Profiles wants to tell you about a new book from Insight Publishing written to help leaders also short of time, but who are serious about the subject of success. “Success Simplified” is a terrific series of interviews from Insight Publishing, in which some of the most distinguished business thought-leaders have distilled their thoughts into useful, tested, and practical advice. These revealing shortcuts to success are led off by Success Profiles with Tom Olivo’s “Leadership Alignment and Getting the Right People in the Right Roles.” Tom’s remarkable concepts prove leaders are the key to success and they are far more likely to be successful when they are put in the right roles. His analysis is backed up by 25 years of hard performance measurements of thousands of leaders across industry, most notably in healthcare. Success Profiles would be proud to help simplify your success.
Tom Olivo, Success Profiles, Inc.
Tom Olivo, through Success Profiles, has measured the performance of more than a thousand organizations and developed a database of business practices that include more than 30,000 individual business units. He co-authored the 2003 business best-seller, “Impending Crisis”, and is today one of the premier experts in practical and applied measurement for business performance.
Concepts featured in Success Simplified…