What is the most important tool in your management kit bag?

At Soul Trained we believe in the concept of ‘supporting lines’ over ‘reporting lines’. We also believe that the #1 job of a manager is to create the conditions for their people to be successful; that it is the manager’s role to make their team look good, not the other way around. These concepts sit at the core of Soul Trained’s leadership growth learning experiences and workshops and are a part of the how-to of bringing to life our principle that ‘leadership is a behavior, not a title’.

One of the ways in which we help leaders to think through this is by asking them how they would approach leading their people if those people were volunteering their time. In asking this question, leaders are forced to consider how they would approach managing their people if they weren’t being compensated for their efforts with a salary or if they were turning up to work and giving their time out of the goodness of their heart.

While it’s clearly a hypothetical question, it always creates a shift in the conversation and in the leader’s outlook. Here’s why.

It’s true — at least in this economy — that if we want to get paid, we have to put in the hours; that we show-up and that we deliver the goods. What is not mandated is the way in which we put in the hours, the extent to which we will go the extra mile, and the frequency at which we will go above and beyond. All of that is discretionary [and therefore voluntary].

Picture these two scenarios for a moment:

You wake up late because your alarm didn’t go off. You step out of bed only to find your bare foot lands in a ’gift’ the dog left you in the middle of the night. You stumble to the shower to find there is no hot water. After your cold shower you realize that there is no oat milk [we’re in California, okay!?] in the empty carton that the person you live with left in there, which means you can’t eat your cereal and you have to drink your coffee black. You go to get dressed but can’t find any matching socks, your hair wont do what it is supposed to do, and your generous-gifting-dog has left you an additional present by chewing the toes off your shoes. By the time you make it to your desk [at home or in the office] it feels like you have already had a full day and you are far from ready to start another one. You’re at work in body, but your heart and soul is still under the covers.

You wake up 1 minute before your alarm and just at the perfect moment when the happiest of dreams you were having comes to a successful conclusion. You get out of bed and take a shower of the perfect temperature. You step out of the shower to find the person you live with has placed a cup of coffee just the way you like it next to the sink with a little note to say that breakfast is ready. Having eaten the most exquisite avocado on toast with a soft poached egg, microgreens, red pepper flakes, and toasted black sesame seeds [I told you we were in California], you get dressed in your power outfit [you know the one]. When you check yourself in the mirror you find yourself smiling at what is being reflected back at you. With Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ playing in your head, you are literally full of the joys of spring and are excited to get stuck into the day ahead at work.

Neither of these scenarios require too much of a stretch of the imagination. Equally it doesn’t take a genius to work out how each scenario might impact the extent we apply our discretionary effort.

Of course, the happenings in each of these scenarios are not influenced by a manager, but there are a number of conditions at work that the manager does directly influence.

Here are just a few, which are taken from Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman’s 1999 book, First Break All The Rules, which was named one of the 25 most influential business books of all time. The book is a result of observations based on 80,000 interviews with managers as conducted by the Gallup Organization in the last 25 years:

• Providing role clarity and goal clarity so that your people know what is expected of them
• Ensuring they have the materials and equipment they need to do their work correctly
• Regularly finding ways for them to play to their strengths and do what they do best
• Offering praise or recognition for good work; saying ‘thank you’
• Demonstrate genuine care for them as a human being
• Encouraging them to develop and grow

Buckingham and Coffman’s research showed that these 6 factors are highly influential over 4 key business metrics — profitability, productivity, client satisfaction, and employee satisfaction and retention.

Soul Trained goes further to believe that they are the most important inputs and ingredients in proactively managing discretionary effort; in ensuring that your people will go above and beyond because they want to, and not because they have to.

Imagine, for a moment, the flipside of proactively managing discretionary effort — how much time do you think is lost by team members who are demoralized because they are unclear, not cared for, unthanked, or unheard? Without the right conditions to be successful, you’re likely to see spikes in attrition and harbor team members who could be vicariously passing on their demotivation across the team.

Proactively managing discretionary effort could well be the secret weapon of the most successful businesses. You owe it to yourself, your team, and your business to do it.

Here’s a cool article with more on the topic. Get in touch at www.soultrained.com if you want to talk about helping your managers bring this to life in real and tangible ways.

#shifthappens #executivecoaching #leadershipgrowth #brandculture #kindness #empathy #coaching #businesscoaching #leadershipdevelopment