3 Questions You Must Answer to Know if You’re Setting Your Employees Up for Success

If you’ve ever had employees work for you then you’ve likely been in the situation where you have to decide whether or not to let them go for poor job performance. How did you get there? What led that employee to perform poorly? If you’re in a leadership role your job is to set your people up to succeed; to give them what they need to do what you hired them to do.

There are legitimate reasons to fire someone little to no notice. For me that would involve willful or gross negligence, or criminal activity. In those cases the answer is fairly simple – termination is warranted right then. There are other factors, as well, that would rightly lead to ending their employment with you.

But, if you have an employee that is struggling to do what you hired them to do and you are considering letting them go, there are three questions that you must answer before you make that decision:

1.      Did the employee know what was expected of him/her? It seems like a simple question but I have worked with a few clients that had let people go without knowing if the person knew what was expected of them. If your employee doesn’t have a clear understanding of what is expected of them, then how could they know what they were supposed to do?

2.      Was the employee properly trained to perform their duties? There have been many times when I have seen people thrown into a job or a task without adequate, or sometimes any, training to do the job. That seems incredulous in this day and age but it happens more often than you would think. If they haven’t been shown the proper way to do the job, how can you expect them to do it properly?

3.      Does the employee have the right tools to do the job? This is the last question I ask. If they know what is expected of them, and have been properly trained to do the job, were they given the appropriate tools? If the employee’s job is to drive nails into the wall, sending them out with a spoon is of little help. Why weren’t they given a hammer?

Our job as leaders is to set our employees up to succeed. The calculation is simple – our success is dependent upon their success. If you can’t honestly answer ‘YES’ to each of these questions, you have set them up to fail. And in that case, you have failed as a leader, too.

Make sure you can answer each of those questions with a resounding ‘YES’.

For more information about employee engagement, or to see how The Cobalt Group can help you with this or any other business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

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Copyright © 2018 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

The Hot Wash

Almost every evolution that occurred in my Navy career was hot washed. That is a military term for reviewing the lessons learned. We debriefed every flight, every exercise, and almost every evolution. We looked at what we did right and what we did wrong. It never made us perfect at what we were doing but when those lessons learned were incorporated into the next event, it made for fewer and fewer mistakes. This especially helped in the planning phases.

Since joining the corporate world I have not seen that done very often. In my first job as a sales rep I went to my boss after the first win to see if she wanted a debrief. She asked me if we won and I said yes. Then she asked what there was to debrief. Being new to the corporate world, I guessed that winning meant not needing to review things. I was used to hot washing everything so I figured it was how things were done. After my first loss I went back with the same thing and the response was about the same with the exception of her asking what I would do differently the next time. That was the extent of the hot wash.

In successive jobs I have had much the same experience. Most of these were not small companies but big multi-billion dollar corporations. Even the company that had a process for what I call a hot wash did not enforce it, nor did it ever really even ask for one. I offered to do one and while they did agree to it, I would have thought that they would have been more interested to know why we lost a $30M+ opportunity. So I put the presentation together and gave it. They were grateful and said all the right things, but nothing really changed.

So why should you do a hot wash? That could be a rhetorical question, but worth addressing nonetheless. All of our lives we should learn from our mistakes. We all make them and nothing is perfect. But, if we don’t take a look at what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong we will set ourselves up to possibly repeating the same mistakes again. And in business, those mistakes make us look bad, at best, and can cost a lot of money, at the worst.

Hot washes shouldn’t be finger pointing exercises either. Establish a formal process to review every bid you make. Look at what you did right. Reinforce those actions. Give praise to those responsible for it. Next, look at what you did wrong. Don’t adopt the zero defect mentality over these errors. Figure out what you need to do to keep from doing it again the next time. No phase of any business venture goes perfectly. Some mistakes may not have had any impact this time, but it doesn’t mean that they may not hurt you the next time.

Take the time to establish a process for reviewing your business successes and losses. Be objective and be honest in your critiques. Leave your egos out of it too. That is the only way to get better. And in the long run, doing a hot wash will pay big dividends.

Happy New Year to you all and our wish is for much success for you in 2015!

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2015 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

The Zero Defect Mentality

How many of you work in an environment that is not tolerant of any mistake? It’s the one and done culture. Make an error and you’re gone.The Zero Defect Mentality occurs in places where the leadership, the culture, or the prevailing belief is that mistakes will not be tolerated. This can be in the military or in the corporate world. I have been in them and they are not fun places to work.

No one really wants to fail or make a mistake. But the truth is that we do both. Often. Most of us fear failure. That fear often makes us cautious, hesitant, and indecisive, among other things. Those behaviors can lead to no decision being made, or bad decisions being made in the hope of minimizing the risk of failing and looking bad. And it is not just the failure that people fear, it’s also the consequences of it: getting fired, getting demoted, being humiliated, getting passed over for that promotion, and so on.

I believe the good leader will make sure his/her people understand that no one is perfect and mistakes can and will happen. And when those mistakes do occur they will be addressed but not in a Zero Defect Mentality sort of way. In my Navy career in aviation, the price of a mistake could be fatal. That is way less likely to be the case in the corporate world,. So a good leader will foster an environment that lets people know that making a mistake can be turned into a good learning opportunity and hopefully preventing a repeat of that mistake. Don’t get me wrong, there is a difference between and honest mistake and gross negligence, and the latter should have a bigger consequence.

History is full of people that made what would have been career ending mistakes were they in a Zero Defect Mentality organization but went on to do great things. Take a look at Chester Nimitz. As an ensign he ran a destroyer into a sand bar. I am sure he was the butt of a lot of jokes but he later went on to be the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet in WWII. How might that war have ended if his naval career had been cut short over that mistake?

I leave you with this thought. Failure is always an option. Do all you can to mitigate the risk of failure but don’t make the mistake of NOT addressing the possibility of failure. Even in the things in life where I succeeded I made many mistakes along the way. I am grateful for the leaders that made those mistakes into great lessons learned and didn’t foster the Zero Defect Mentality culture.

The Promotion Conundrum

How many times have you sat around the water cooler discussing what is screwed up with those people in positions of leadership above you? I am guessing that only a few of us have not done this at one time or another. 

But here is something to think about the next time you sit around complaining about your company’s leadership at any level. We are responsible for placing them there.

I’ll use sales as an example. I have seen too many occasions where the #1 sales rep was promoted to be a Sales Manager (I hate that word). 

The thinking was, hey, he/she was the number one rep for me (maybe more than once) so they must be able to fill that Sales Manager job. 

Most of the ones I observed failed. Not because they were not good sales reps or were not good people, but in most of these cases they were not ready to lead, and when put into positions of leadership they were not equipped with the right training to even have a chance. 

I have talked with many of them afterwards and, to a person, they all freely admitted that they were not really ready for a leadership role.

If you want to fix the problem you perceive exists in the leadership structure of your organization, pay attention to how you promote or rank people. 

Promote people according to the entire package. Technical expertise at whatever job they hold does not equate to leadership. 

That is only one part of the package. But, if they cannot lead ants to a picnic then they are being set up to fail.

To get real leaders in place, promote the person with the total package. You know who can lead and who cannot (at least without some training). 

If you promote the ones that are better leaders you will get better leadership. Just because someone is the best sales rep doesn’t mean they will be a good sales manager. 

My financial advisor always says that past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

So you leaders out there (and those of you that eventually get into those roles) need to start by grooming your replacements. 

By preparing those under you to replace you when you move up (or on) you are helping yourselves, your companies and your future leaders. 

Or, we can keep promoting those that are not ready so that we can have more people to talk about at the water cooler.

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you with any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2013 The Cobalt Group, LLC. All rights reserved.