Leadership and Tennis Stroke 3: People Skills Great leadership requires a deep understanding of people. Excellent communication is a vital starting point. But in addition, you need to understand what people need to be successful and motivated in their jobs. Here is a simple framework that has proven to be one of the most valuable things I have ever learned about leadership. There are five critical things a person needs from a leader in just about any situation: Mission—why are we here and where are we going? Goals—what specifically do I need to accomplish? Feedback—how am I doing? Rewards—what’s in it for me? Support—where do I go for help when I get stuck? However—like everything else about leadership—if you get the basic principals right and just practice “hitting the tennis ball” every day you don’t really need all the rest. Think hard about this framework whenever you are dealing with people, whether you’re trying to develop them to their highest potential, or trying to solve a performance problem. Go through each element in your head to try to get a handle on what they really need from you and what’s missing: Mission—Does this person understand where we are going and the importance of his/her role in getting there? Goals—Does this person understand and embrace the specific goals that need to be achieved? Feedback—Is this person getting accurate and constructive feedback about how he/she is doing in reaching his/her goals? Rewards—Does this person feel he/she is adequately rewarded (financially or otherwise) for the contributions he/she is making to the organization? Support—Does this person know where to go for help when he/she is stuck, and does he/she feel perfectly comfortable asking for it? I have rarely encountered a people problem where there was not a gaping hole in one or more of these five elements. The solution almost always involves explicitly and aggressively filling the appropriate gap. Even if there are few problems to solve, these five elements are still essential for any person to achieve his/her full potential. Of course, all this assumes that you have the right people to begin with—that they can do the job. But in many cases, people are only ineffective because they are missing mission, goals, feedback, rewards, or support, and once this is fixed, they can become real stars in their jobs. Different Strokes For Different Folks Ken Blanchard wrote an excellent book some years ago called Leadership and the One Minute Manager” - a very quick read, more like a long essay than a book. It makes another critical point about people leadership—that people need different things from a leader at different stages of any project, depending on how much they already know about the work involved, and what their attitude is: If a person has low knowledge, he/she needs a highly directive style of leadership—you need to tell him/her what to do and how to do it. As a person gets more competent on a project, he/she needs less direction and more of a coaching style of leadership, more advice and motivating. After a while, a person needs almost no direction, just a supporting style of leadership. Eventually, a person needs neither direction nor support on a project. In fact you will be a real irritation if you try to provide much of either. What this person now needs is an empowering style of leadership. The important thing is to match your style to the needs of your people, and these styles are not fixed by person, but vary project by project and over time.
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