The Great Resignation. The Great Attrition. The Mass Exodus.

The historic turmoil taking place in today’s workplace has been given many names—and for good reason. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a record-breaking 10.9 million jobs were open at the end of July 2021.[1]

This unprecedented turnover will stretch long into the future. Some 41% of the global workforce is “considering leaving their employer in the current year,” while “95% of workers are contemplating a job change.”[2]

All this turnover comes at a staggering cost: 30%–40% of the annual salary for entry-level employees; 150% for mid-level employees; and up to 400% for highly skilled employees.[3]

The costs are particularly steep for the sales function:

• The average salesperson needs 15 months before becoming a top performer.^[4]
• A company spends on average $106,374 for a salesperson’s salary, health care, etc., before the person starts to reach their quota.[5]
• The annual turnover rate for salespeople is 27%—twice that of the overall labor force.[6]

A little reflection reveals a sobering conclusion: A company cannot succeed if there is significant turnover in its sales force. The cost of the investment, the long lead time before success, the risk of a salesperson quitting, and the opportunities lost along the way are financially crippling.

The Pivotal Role of the Sales Manager

Sales managers have an oversized influence on the struggles and successes of a salesperson.

Gallup found that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores across business units.[7] An article in Harvard Business Review went even further:

High-performing sales leaders reported an overall average annual quota attainment of 105% compared to 54% for underperforming sales managers.[8]

The same article stated that when salespeople rate their manager as being excellent or above average, 69% of them exceed quota.[9]

So how can sales managers help their new hires?

Using SLII® with New Hires

SLII®, the world’s most taught leadership development solution, is a proven way to help salespeople succeed. It categorizes a person’s capability for a given task or goal into four categories:

• D1—Enthusiastic Beginner. You’re usually at D1 when you’re starting to learn something new.
  • Remember how you couldn’t wait to ride a bike? You were at D1 on that goal.
• D2—Disillusioned Learner. You inevitably discover that what you’re trying to learn is harder than you first thought.
  • Pedaling, steering, and keeping your balance was trickier than it looked at D2.
• D3—Capable, but Cautious, Contributor. You need to build your confidence in using the new skill.
  • At D3 you could now ride around the block, but your first outing to a crowded park was a bit intimidating.
• D4—Self-Reliant Achiever. You’re highly competent at a task and committed to doing an excellent job.
  • When you reached D4, you could help your younger sibling learn to ride!

SLII® teaches managers to match their leadership style to an employee’s needs by using the appropriate directive and supportive behaviors. The four leadership styles are S1 (Directing), S2 (Coaching), S3 (Supporting), and S4 (Delegating). When leaders match their leadership style with an employee’s development level on a particular task or goal, the person develops competence, motivation, and confidence. And because their development leads to new career opportunities, they stay with your company.

New salespeople are at D1 or D2 on many tasks. They have considerable commitment (motivation and confidence) but little competence, even if they were a top performer at their previous job.

Here are examples of Style 1 leadership that sales managers can use to get new hires off to a fast start:

• Give clear goals
• Set timelines for accomplishing them
• Prioritize tasks
• Create a step-by-step learning plan
• Show what a good job looks like
• Give access to resources
• Share generous feedback on progress

Sales managers should also acknowledge a new hire’s transferable skills and commitment. People at D1 on a specific task or goal are receptive to direction when you acknowledge their commitment.

Sales managers can also paint a picture of success. That means showing the new hire what a good job looks like instead of letting the person develop bad habits as they struggle to find their own way. This tactic works because brain stores information as images, not words.

Time Well Spent

Millions of people worldwide are reevaluating their careers because of the pandemic. Competition for talented sales professionals is fierce. What’s a sales manager to do?

Take the time to invest in your new hires. Use SLII® when you lead. It will pay returns for years to come.

You can learn more about the impact that SLII® can have in your organization by downloading the new eBook Turning New Hires into Top Performers… Quickly. Looking for more content specific to sales management? Check out Meeting the Quota Challenge: Critical Skills Every Sales Manager Needs to Excel. Both downloads are free courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

ENDNOTES

[1] https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignation?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_actsubs&utm_content=signinnudge&deliveryName=DM150635

[2] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work#:~:text=Today%2C%20our%20research%20shows%20that,major%20pivot%20or%20career%20transition.

[3] https://www.clickboarding.com/employee-turnover-what-is-it/

[4] https://www.indeed.com/career/salesperson/salaries

[5] https://www.sba.gov/blog/how-much-does-employee-cost-you#:~:text=There’s%20a%20rule%20of%20thumb,little%20harder%20to%20pin%20down.

[6] https://hbr.org/2017/07/how-to-predict-turnover-on-your-sales-team

[7] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/231593/why-great-managers-rare.aspx#:~:text=Companies%20fail%20to%20choose%20the,of%20the%20time%2C%20Gallup%20finds&text=Managers%20account%20for%20at%20least,severely%20low%20worldwide%20employee%20engagement.

[8] https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-7-attributes-of-the-most-effective-sales-leaders

[9] https://hbr.org/2015/09/the-7-attributes-of-the-most-effective-sales-leaders

Most companies want their employees to continue to grow and develop because they know employee growth benefits not only the individual but also the organization. For example, how would productivity change if an employee became a more effective communicator or learned to manage others using a coach approach?

To foster employee growth and development, organizations often enroll people in training or provide them with a coach. What they don’t do enough of, however, is encourage the managers of these employees to support that growth and development. 

This type of manager involvement is often referred to as stakeholder engagement. Simply put, the leader is paying attention to their employees’ development. Stakeholder engagement does not have to be time consuming or difficult. And it’s been documented that when managers are involved, it’s much more likely that an employee’s training and coaching will meet or exceed desired outcomes.

Why stakeholder engagement?

Stakeholders are in a great position to provide helpful feedback to their employees. The employee can use this valuable data to determine their development goals and how those goals relate to the organization’s needs. Additionally, stakeholders can:

• Encourage the employee to share their learning objectives to make sure the two parties agree on the work the employee should focus on. Then together, they can align the employee’s development goals with organizational objectives to increase the impact of the learning. This not only maximizes the employee’s effectiveness but can also increase their overall contribution.
• Provide insight and suggestions for improvement and behavioral change to the employee and help them understand the manager’s vision for their role.
• Emphasize the organization’s level of commitment regarding the employee’s development.
• Recognize whether or not the employee is invested in their own development.
• Encourage the employee to invest more effort in pursuing learning opportunities.
• Hold both themselves and the employee accountable for the employee’s development goals.

Manager involvement before training or coaching

When stakeholders get involved early, they can help direct the course of an employee’s learning—it can be as simple as the leader recognizing and acknowledging the developmental work the employee is taking on. More often, however, it involves the manager facilitating a conversation with the employee before training or coaching begins. During this conversation, manager and employee can discuss:

• The organization’s key goals, objectives, vision, and values
• The employee’s key initiatives and how their role fits into the overall strategy of the organization—linking the employee’s development to the organization’s purpose and desired outcomes
• The way employee performance is evaluated and how it ties into business metrics 
• The stakeholder’s thoughts on the employee’s goals with the goal of agreement on skills the employee needs to achieve specific results. They can then work together to consider how the employee’s actions impact the employee, the manager, and the organization.
• Potential gaps the training or coaching might be able to close that will enable the employee to improve and maximize the value they bring to the organization.
• The employee’s Individual Development Plan (IDP), if they have one—or, if not, manager and employee may discuss how to create one. It’s always a good idea to have a written plan defining employee development objectives. At the end of the conversation, the IDP serves as a contract between employee and manager that outlines what they will do together on further development.

Manager involvement after training or coaching

At the end of training or coaching, stakeholder and employee can review:

• Key concepts from the training and how to use them to be more effective going forward. Help make the concepts come alive by linking the learnings to the employee’s strategic and organizational objectives.
• The employee’s IDP and how the learnings might align with, enhance, or change their development plans. Discuss specific actions the employee is going to take, including timeframes and deadlines.
• Having ongoing conversations about the employee’s IDP and their new learnings. There is so much value in having regular development discussions; don’t let this be “one and done.”

These conversations are extremely important. They not only engage the manager with the development process but also begin to assign some ownership to the manager for the eventual level of development achieved by the employee.

Employee development is everyone’s responsibility

The reality is that an employee’s growth and development is the responsibility of the whole organization. Stakeholders getting involved can provide a big return on investment without being time consuming. Many stakeholders are motivated by their own participation because they feel they are contributing not only to their employee’s development, but also to their own success. When this happens, it’s a win for all!

Are you a stakeholder who could increase your involvement in your employees’ development? Or perhaps you are an employee who could benefit from more attention from your manager regarding your development? I hope this post has given you some ideas for getting started!

About the Author

Joanne Maynard is a senior coach with The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 130 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services.

Recent technology advances have made it a lot easier to create the type of collaborative learning experiences today’s organizations are looking for, says Scott Blanchard, president of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“Platforms from companies like Intrepid and Degreed have allowed us to create a cohort-based design that stretches the learning out over a period of six weeks. In many ways it’s structured like a for-credit online course that might be offered at a university. It encourages participants to digest what they’ve learned, test it, and then bring it back to class the following week for discussion with other leaders in their cohort. The result is a richer experience that enables the mindset and provides the skillset to put the new learning into action.”

Blanchard recently tried out the new design for Self Leadership—his company’s frontline leadership training program that teaches proactive leadership skills to people at all levels in an organization.

“Although the content was very familiar to me, I felt like I was experiencing much of it for the first time. I think that’s a testament to the design. Instead of packing everything into a one-day session, we were able to take our time and really drill into the concepts—in this case, challenging our assumed constraints, identifying our points of power, and being proactive.

“What I found most interesting was that, even though I’ve taught Self Leadership for years, I still found myself walking away with a couple of things that I had never put into practice myself.

“For example, I was talking with my cohort group at our weekly online inspiration session—these are weekly get-togethers where participants share what they’ve learned from applying the concepts over the past week. All at once I realized that I had some assumed constraints around a couple of issues I was struggling with. And what’s cool about an assumed constraint is as soon as you see it and identify it, you can release yourself from it.

“I had a similar experience when it came to conducting and participating in one-on-ones—those weekly or bi-weekly meetings that we hope are occurring between managers and direct reports. Having the time to digest and reflect back on my past experience allowed me to evaluate the quality of the one-on-ones I was currently conducting. I learned a couple of things I was able to put into practice immediately that made my next series of one-on-ones better.”

Even if the class were offered in a traditional one-day format, Blanchard still thinks he would opt for the collaborative six-week design.

“For me, it’s a better way to learn. Instead of spending six hours in a one-day session, with 45 minutes on goal setting and then 45 minutes on another topic, people get to spend an entire week working on putting one idea into practice. When you work on one concept for a week, it starts showing up on the job and you can see the value of applying it.

“The cohort experience is also important. I loved the weekly inspiration sessions where we shared our learnings and experiences. They provided an opportunity for bonding, social interaction, and accountability—no one wants to show up not having done their homework.”

For leadership, learning, and talent development professionals interested in testing out the new online design, Blanchard encourages L&D leaders to join an open enrollment session being conducted for six weeks beginning on July 27.

“You owe it to yourself to give it a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what a great experience it is and the depth of learning you achieve.”

You can learn more about the upcoming cohort group at The Ken Blanchard Companies website.

Historically, leadership development has been the one “vertical” within traditional learning and development curriculums that was immune to digitalization. Training and workshops had to be face to face—or so the story was told.

But the nature of our workforce and operational constraints have forced a change for nearly every global organization—and when you overlay disruption at work (like what we are experiencing right now), you’ll find that the need for a fresh, modern approach to effective, human-centered digital leadership development experiences has never been so pressing.

Leaders and practitioners know that they need to change how learning happens, leadership development and beyond, but they don’t necessarily understand how to get from today to a tomorrow that is still human-centered and has measurable business impact.

As a solutions architect at Blanchard, one element of my job is to help our clients sort out the noise regarding platforms, access points, user experience, reinforcement and sustainment, while at the same time finding a way to blend content and digital into an experience that results in the type of leader people love to work for.

This means while designing with the helping hand of smart technologies, our experiences need to be undeniably human.

That’s our goal. We develop learning experiences that are deeply rooted to your leaders and learners: who they are, what they do, and when and how they work. And we build experiences that improve their awareness and capability and move the needle forward for your business.

Over the next two weeks we will showcase some of the ways you can bring digital offerings into your organization.

• On March 18, I will present on Leveraging Learning Technologies.
• On March 26, my colleague Britney Cole will present on Evaluating Digital Leadership Training Programs.
• On March 27, virtual training expert Brent Bystedt will share best practices on Conducting Your First Virtual Session.

Click on any of the titles above to register for the session of your choice. All of these sessions are free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Have an immediate need or a more in-depth question? Use this Contact Us link to set up a complimentary consultation with a Blanchard solutions specialist.

Together, let’s bring a people-centered, digital approach to the leadership development space.

About the Author

Ann Rollins is a solutions architect with The Ken Blanchard Companies. A modern learning champion with more than 25 years of industry experience helping form and execute learning strategy for Fortune and Global 500 companies, Ann always has her eyes on the technology horizon. Her passion lies in helping clients sort out the learning angles and attainability of technology in workforce learning and performance to build future-forward, human-centered experiences.

Measuring the Impact and ROI of Leadership Training, a new ebook just published by The Ken Blanchard Companies, shows how training and development professionals can calculate an estimated return on a proposed training initiative by looking at the bottom-line impact of better leadership in three areas: employee retention, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity. Utilizing Blanchard’s ROI methodology, readers will be able to demonstrate that leadership development programs produce a return on investment of at least 8:1 after program participants adopt new skills.

More discoveries from the ebook:

• Better leadership practices reduce voluntary turnover by up to 32 percent.
• Better leadership practices improve customer satisfaction scores by up to three percentage points—the equivalent of 1 percent of annual sales. That equals $1 million in increased revenue for companies with $100 million in sales.
• The largest benefit of better leadership skills is improved employee productivity. Citing a case study with a large financial service firm, the ebook identifies that better leadership practices can generate productivity improvement of between 5 and 12 percent. When calculated as a percentage of annual payroll using the same $100 million dollar company, that’s an amount equal to at least $2 million per year!

According to the new ebook, leadership training generates a large return on investment because of the multiplier effect. When organizations train one manager, it creates an improved work environment for seven or more individual contributors who report to that manager.

Leadership, learning, and talent development professionals who want to learn more about calculating the impact of their proposed training initiatives can download the on-demand ebook from The Ken Blanchard Companies for free! Use this link: Measuring the Impact and ROI of Leadership Training.

Does training really work?

“If we as leadership, learning, and development professionals can’t answer that question with an enthusiastic yes, we’re all in trouble,” says Dr. Paul Leone, ROI expert at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results.

“The truth is, HR people don’t always know if training is working,” says Leone. “Often we ask for budget at the beginning of the year, but at the end of the year we aren’t able to show the training has had an impact on the bottom line. That’s not a good position to be in.

“Imagine how much better you would feel if you could go into meetings with senior leaders and stakeholders saying, ‘This time I have some data—and I can show that we are impacting the bottom line by X amount of dollars.’ I think that’s where we all want to be in the industry.”

The good news, according to Leone, is that you can demonstrate the impact of training if you know where to look, how to set up your initiative, and how to present your data.

“Begin with the end in mind,” says Leone. “What are the leadership behaviors you want to impact and what is the benefit in terms of increased sales or productivity, decreased costs from better alignment or efficiencies, or improvements to the customer experience?

“Senior leaders want to know that the money they are spending on training is generating a good return on investment. If you don’t clearly identify the benefits along with the costs of training, it creates some pretty lopsided equations and makes it difficult to talk about ROI—because training is seen only as a cost. That’s a vulnerable position.”

Start Small and Be Conservative in Your Approach

For L&D professionals just getting started with measuring ROI, Leone suggests focusing on a small, manageable test case, such as a pilot study with a group of managers who have direct reports with easily quantifiable key performance indicators (KPI).

“Two things are important here,” says Leone. “First, remember that you are measuring the benefit of better leader behaviors by looking at the improvement in performance of that leader’s direct reports—that’s where the bottom-line impact will show up. For example, better leader behaviors from a call center manager will translate into better performance from that manager’s frontline associates. Better goal-setting and coaching skills from a sales manager will translate into better sales performance from that manager’s individual salespeople.”

“Second, choose managers whose direct reports have KPIs that are easier to convert into bottom line impact. Don’t try to quantify the impact of better research and development performance among a group of engineers as your first project. Choose a group where you can measure shorter-term impact and easily convert improved performance into dollars and cents.”

Use a Proven Model and Process

Leone also recommends using a proven approach such as the Phillips ROI model and the Kirkpatrick levels of change. He suggests focusing on levels 3, 4, and 5 in the Kirkpatrick model which cover leader behavior changes and bottom-line impact.

Leone uses a survey administered 90 days after training to measure perceived changes in manager behavior. To corroborate answers and provide a more airtight case when presenting evidence of changed behaviors to senior executives, Leone surveys both the managers who participated in the class and their direct reports.

“It’s important to not only ask the managers if they have changed their behavior, but also ask the direct reports if they have experienced changed behavior from their manager. This provides a corroborating data point.”

To isolate the impact of the changed behaviors on business performance, Leone recommends comparing the financial performance of the treatment group (the managers who went through the training) with a control group (similar managers in an identical business unit who have not yet gone through the training).

“Comparing the treatment group with a control group allows you to isolate the benefits of the training. When senior leaders know that everything else between the two groups is identical, they are more at ease attributing the improved performance to the training initiative.”

Keep the Presentation Simple for Best Results

Leone also has a tip for how to present the data to senior leaders: keep it simple!

“When I first began presenting data after graduate school, I thought it was necessary to show things like multiple regressions and multivariate analysis in my presentations. But in reality, it had the opposite effect. When I made my presentations more understandable, they started to go higher and higher in the organization.

“If you want to squash your story, throw in a lot of numbers and tables,” says Leone with a smile. “But if you want to push that story up the hierarchy to the highest levels, make it simple and it will get up there.”

Establish Credibility that Lasts and Builds Confidence

“The goal with your ROI presentations is to create credibility within the organization—where you can say, ‘If we are going to keep a program, we are going to run a pilot and we’ll measure it. If it’s great, we’ll scale it across the organization. If it’s not so great, we won’t.’ I can guarantee you that at some point in the very near future, someone is going to ask if a training worked. You will want a study and some data to show that it did.

“Remember, you don’t need to measure everything at first,” says Leone. “Go in and measure one or two programs and do it right. Once you get your foot in the door as a credible evaluator, you’ll have a much easier time securing budget in the future.”

Would you like to learn more about calculating ROI and measuring the impact of training? Join us for a free webinar!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Making the Business Case

Thursday, November 29, 2018, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Improving leadership skills is one of the best ways to impact your organization’s bottom line. Still, many leadership, learning, and talent development professionals struggle with both identifying the expected return on investment for training expenditures and measuring impact after an initiative.

In this webinar, David Witt, program director at The Ken Blanchard Companies, teams up with Dr. Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results to show you how to identify anticipated fiscal impact of a leadership training initiative and how to measure it in a cost-effective manner after the class has been conducted.

You’ll learn:

• How to calculate the ROI for your leadership training initiative using Blanchard’s Leadership Training ROI Worksheet. (Worksheet provided to all registrants.)
• How to measure the impact of training using the methodology outlined in Leone’s book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact.
• How to improve the adoption of new leadership practices from the classroom to the work environment.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to quantify the impact of leadership training in proposals—and how to set up your training to deliver on expectations.

Register today using this link!

As a part of a 13-city servant leadership executive briefing series, Halsey has worked with leadership, learning, and talent development professionals to identify more than 60 skills and attributes that should be part of a comprehensive servant leadership training program.

“Of course you have to take this a step at a time,” says Halsey, “and recognize that some of your desired outcomes are part of a mindset—attitudinal, while others are part of a skill set—behaviors that can be learned and developed.”

“Topping the servant leader mindset traits is empathy, closely followed by selflessness and humility,” says Halsey. “This is the recognition that leadership is not about you and your agenda.  It is about leading others to achieve their goals in order to achieve larger organizational goals in a collaborative way.  It’s about assessing people’s needs and providing the right amount of direction and support to help them succeed.”

The top servant leader skill set behaviors are task- or goal-specific listening, asking questions instead of telling, and focusing on how and when to develop others.

“These are skills that can be taught,” explains Halsey.  “If you want to be a servant leader, you must focus your energies on developing and practicing the behaviors of a servant leader.”

Halsey recommends that L&D professionals conduct an audit of their current leadership development curriculum and compare it against the complete list of attributes identified by learning professionals.

“Most organizations have some of the components already in place as a part of their current leadership development curriculum. But there are often a few competencies not on the list, such as advanced coaching skills, building trust, and self leadership, for example.

“When you compare your list with the complete list, look for gaps and consider how they might be addressed. Don’t overlook leadership basics,” says Halsey.

“Performance management concepts such as collaborative goal setting, situational specific day-to-day coaching, and effective performance reviews are still critical.  You are covering the same content—just from a different point of view.

“Once you have all of the pieces in place, the next step is to organize the content in a logical flow where leaders learn and practice basic skills in and out of context and then move to more advanced skills.  Along the way, keep working on encouraging a servant leadership mindset as you teach the servant leadership skill set.”

The world needs a new leadership model, says Halsey—one that focuses on both people and results.

“Engaged people and great results are not mutually exclusive—you can achieve both.  With some good design and consistent application, you can create an organizational culture where leaders see their job as serving others and also see goal achievement as a shared responsibility.”

Would you like to learn more about creating a servant leadership curriculum in your organization?  Join us for a free webinar!

3 Keys to Building a Servant Leadership Curriculum

Thursday, November 15, 2018, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Servant leadership principles are being rediscovered by a new generation of leadership, learning, and talent development professionals. An others-focused approach where people lead best by serving first is being recognized as one of the best ways to unlock performance in today’s organizations.

In this webinar, instructional design expert Dr. Vicki Halsey, vice president of applied learning at The Ken Blanchard Companies, will share how to design, build, and launch an effective servant leadership curriculum. Drawing on her research and experience designing hundreds of training courses for clients worldwide, Vicki will share three keys to an effective curriculum:

Identify the key components of a comprehensive program. Halsey will share research on the attitudes, skills, and behaviors most associated with an others-focused approach to leadership.

Evaluate current gaps in existing training. A comprehensive curriculum includes self-awareness, listening, coaching, and performance management components. Halsey will show you how to audit your current classes and identify gaps.

Utilize effective design principles. An effective curriculum includes asynchronous and virtual training components as well as face-to-face components for interpersonal skills. Halsey will share how to match technology to content and how to create engaging learning experiences across all modalities.

Participants will have an opportunity to ask questions, explore options, and get answers about their own designs from Halsey’s expert instructional design point of view.

Use the link below to register.  This event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

REGISTER NOW

I was recently convinced by senior team members to hire someone for my team who is overqualified for the position.

I am trained in Situational Leadership® II and it has served me well – but my new hire won’t let me use it.

He is competent in some aspects of the job, but he is totally ignorant of our culture and the way things get done here. This person is in such a hurry that he is not listening to my direction. He continuously challenges my decisions and authority.

He undoubtedly has skill and experience, but his enthusiasm is not being applied where it will serve the team and his onboarding success. I’m afraid he’s going to step off in front of the wrong people and land us both in hot water. Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Struggling Leader

Dear Struggling Leader,

Oh dear. May we all, please, be spared having a new employee pressed upon us by the higher-ups? It so rarely ends well. Overqualification isn’t always a terrible thing—but the person you hire needs to have a secure enough ego to come in with a beginners’ mindset and have some respect for the person who hired them.

But here you are holding the bag, so it is probably in your best interest to at least try to salvage the situation. You need to go at this head on. Sit this guy down and tell him that his unwillingness to listen to you is going to cause big problems for both of you—and that if he doesn’t slow down and pay attention, you will have no choice but to let him go during his probationary period.

You can also have compassion for his position. He has great transferable skills, knows what he is doing, and has tons of experience.

You can also ask him to appreciate your position better. Explain that you don’t believe he understands how he needs to do things to be successful in this particular environment. Be clear that you are on his side and that your intention is to help him be successful. Share your concerns about his inability to take advantage of your experience in the organization.

Finally, share the Situational Leadership® II model with him. Explain that although he has transferable skills, he still needs to learn the ropes in the new organization and your job is to make sure he knows how to do that.

Explain that you want to start with tight oversight and supervision and that you will back off and loosen up as soon as you see ample evidence that he isn’t going to step off in front of the wrong people and land you both in hot water.

In all cases, stay neutral and non-judgmental. If he just can’t hear it, nip it in the bud and let him go. If he seems to get it and yet still doesn’t comply, you owe him one more try. He may genuinely not get it. But he also may be “yessing” you, in which case—nip it in the bud.

Document every infraction, every conversation and agreement, so that if you are called to account by these higher-ups you can explain exactly how things went down.

Be fierce, Struggling Leader. Good luck.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a trainer in a call center. It is fast, loud, and chaotic—and I love it. I take total newbies and train them to start at the most basic levels.

Once they leave me, they go on to other trainers who train them in more specialized work. They all have managers who, in theory, are supposed to give them feedback. The problem is that managers have anywhere from 20-30 direct reports at any given time and there is no way on earth for them to monitor everyone.

As I walk around, I hear my former students making basic errors and I can’t stand it. My problem is that my desire to correct them is almost out of my control. I heard one big error happening the other day, so I stuck my nose in and gave some feedback, nicely. The next thing I knew, that person’s manager (a peer, technically) was upset and complained to their own boss … well, big mess.

Should I just let people make mistakes? I trained these people in the first place, so I feel a certain pride in their performing well. Am I too much of a perfectionist? How should I handle this?

Once a Trainer

Dear Once a Trainer,

As a person who often calls in to call centers, I thank you for your commitment! I could tell you to let it go, that it isn’t worth the hassle, but I am not sure you could live with that.

The other option is to try to shift the training culture in the organization. The first step is to discuss your concerns with your own boss. See if they can use their influence to position you and other basic trainers as roving monitors 100 percent of the time. I can’t imagine that the senior leaders in the organization would object to all employees keeping an eye on quality at all times. You can also socialize the idea with other managers who are your peers, making it clear that your intention is not to step on anyone’s toes but to maintain the quality of the customer experience.

Even if you can’t get buy-in, you could position your role as basic trainer and giver of feedback for all operators always. Tell your newbies that even when they leave you, if you overhear them you will give them feedback—either praising or redirection—for the duration, as that is your job. That way, all of your trainees will expect feedback from you and won’t go running to their managers when you give it. The biggest problem will arise if you give feedback that is different from what another manager would give—so make sure the processes and procedures are clear and consistent. If your feedback is based on your opinion and the person’s manager’s opinion is different … well, big mess.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

For Miller, growing great leaders wasn’t an option at Chick-fil-A.  Accelerated growth was putting a strain on leadership bench strength.

“We needed more leaders faster. We couldn’t just overload existing leaders. We knew we would get to the breaking point.”

Miller discusses the journey Chick-fil-A took in developing a leadership culture—where people are routinely developed.

“You have to start by understanding the importance of leadership and defining what leadership means in your organization. In most organizations you’ll find a wide variety of different answers.  You have to forge a consensus.”

But that’s not the end of it says Miller.  Next, you must train existing and emerging leaders to establish that common language of leadership. Part of that includes giving emerging leaders a chance to practice.  As Miller explains, “Most of what we know about leading we learn from actually doing it.”

“It’s easy to always give tough projects to existing leaders—but you have to be willing to give emerging leaders a chance.  Who are the less seasoned, less experienced, emerging leaders who we could provide with an opportunity?”

Miller also discusses measurement and metrics including a leadership bench strength rating. He recommends using a technique showing how ready people are for their next leadership assignment using a scale of Ready Now; Ready in 1-3 years; or Good in Place.

Be sure to listen to the very end of the interview to hear Ken Blanchard’s thoughts and takeaways from the interview.

Here are the three biggest challenges L&D professionals face—along with some resources to successfully address each challenge.

Adding Credible Numbers to Your Proposal. The first challenge is how to quantify the bottom-line impact of improved leadership behaviors. There are three areas to focus on, says Paul Leone, author of Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact. “Key in on performance indicators that produce revenue, cut costs, or avoid future costs.”

When measuring programs designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders, Leone reminds practitioners to focus on improvements made by the direct reports of the leader in question.

“A leader’s productivity is really an accumulation of their direct reports’ productivity. I measure the impact of leadership training performance by looking at increases in direct reports’ performance and productivity.”

Leone shares more in his interview and webinar on Measuring the Impact of Training.

Convincing Others. Once you have your numbers together, you need to practice your financial presentation skills. “It shouldn’t be an adversarial meeting,” says Craig Spitz, chief financial officer at The Ken Blanchard Companies. “It’s about connecting the dots. Anytime learning and development professionals come prepared with models, numbers, and rationale that help make the case for training, they make the CFO’s job easier. If a training professional can show the impact of training, everyone is going to be interested in that.”

Spitz shares more in his interview and webinar on Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO.

Getting Out of Your Own Way. Finally, it’s important to recognize that there is a certain amount of guesswork when making assumptions about the impact of training. L&D professionals are often their own toughest critics, says Leone.  “Maybe it’s because we come from the social sciences or a more academic background. Maybe we tend to be harder on ourselves or hold ourselves to a higher standard—almost as if we think we need to write a thesis or a dissertation. That’s not the case. We just need to show value.”

But as CFO Spitz reminds L&D professionals, “Even the most thorough proposals are based on assumptions. Present your proposals confidently.”

Are you getting ready to submit a leadership training proposal? Don’t let these three challenges hold you back. For more on calculating impact, refining your presentation, and making the business case, check out these free resources available at the Blanchard website.

Blog Posts

Measuring the Impact of Training

Presenting Your Training Initiative to the CFO

Getting Buy-in for Leadership Development Training

Webinar Recordings

Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to a CFO

Leadership Training: Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

Making the Business Case for Leadership Training

But this isn’t true, says Paul Leone, senior ROI consultant at Verizon and author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results. In Leone’s experience, financial executives are receptive when anyone in an organization shows that money being spent is producing a return.

“Senior executives just want to make sure money is well spent. They are not necessarily looking to reject the proposal. If it will generate results, it’s in everybody’s interest for the organization to do it.”

It’s important for HR and L&D professionals to realize that they are not the only ones coming in with proposals based on assumptions, says Leone. Even the most tangible projects are based on best-guess scenarios.

“Let’s suppose marketing is proposing spending budget making a commercial. They have to ask for budget just like any other department. So they do some predictive analytics and some research, but in the end they are making an educated guess that the commercial will produce an uptick in sales.”

L&D professionals shouldn’t feel that everyone else is going in with rock-solid assumptions and metrics, says Leone. Everyone is in the same boat more than they realize.

“Maybe it’s because we come from the social sciences or a more academic background. Maybe we tend to be harder on ourselves or hold ourselves to a higher standard—almost as if we think we need to write a thesis or a dissertation. That’s not the case. We just need to show value.

“I can honestly say that I think it’s safer to bet on a training experience to improve performance than to take a chance on a commercial. We are adding bottom-line value with training—it’s just that we never measure it.”

When Leone looks at the typical measurements organizations can use to measure the impact of leadership training—employee retention, customer satisfaction, and employee productivity—he recommends a rank order on how to use each of these common measures to make the case for training.

“Productivity is the best and most immediate indicator of training impact. If you send someone to training, increased productivity can happen as fast as the next week or the next month. That’s where your business case should focus. Key in on performance indicators that produce revenue, cut costs, or avoid future costs.

“Customer satisfaction is also good to show, but it’s second down from productivity. In many organizations, there’s not a dollar value assigned to customer satisfaction.

“Employee retention is number three because it is long-term. By the time you show that your training had a positive effect on employee retention, so many other things over the same period of time could’ve happened in the business that could take credit for that.”

When measuring programs designed to increase the effectiveness of leaders, Leone reminds practitioners to focus on improvements made by the direct reports of the leader in question.

“A leader’s productivity is really an accumulation of their direct reports’ productivity. I’m not talking about the leader’s ability to make better presentations, better speeches, or better contributions to teams—even though those things could be counted as gains in productivity. I measure the impact of leadership training performance by looking at increases in direct reports’ performance and productivity. I look to see how these leaders are impacting their frontline people who have the tangible Key Performance Indicators we are tracking every day—sales, repeat calls, phone-ins, customer satisfaction, and the like.”

Leone is also passionate about what he calls Level Six measurement—identifying factors that lead to high levels of ROI.

“After a training event, certain factors in a training participant’s immediate work environment can make or break your training initiative’s overall impact. These factors have nothing to do with your training content, or your trainers, or with how well you planned out your delivery. This is about the manager that the training participant is returning to in the workplace.

“We conducted a recent training where the overall return on investment was about 6 percent—a modest positive return.  But when we focused on a subgroup of 50 people who reported to one specific manager, we found that group had an 1800 percent return on investment! This was directly attributable to what the manager was doing with participants after the training—things like bursts, boosts, contests, and sit-downs, with the manager shadowing people to see if they were handling the calls in the way they had been trained.”

For leadership, learning, and talent development professionals still on the fence about including projected impact numbers in their training proposals, Leone offers encouragement.

“You always get the biggest bang for your buck with leadership training, because you’re sending one person through and influencing the ten people who report to that person. You’re paying for one person and influencing so many others.

“Don’t be afraid to measure the impact of your training. If you don’t, people will never know the value you bring to the organization. Speak up and show your value!”

Would you like to learn more about calculating ROI and measuring the impact of training?  Then join us for a free webinar!

Leadership Training—Calculating ROI and Measuring Impact

November 29, 2017, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Improving leadership skills is one of the best ways to impact your organization’s bottom line. Still, many leadership, learning, and talent development professionals struggle to identify the expected return on investment for training expenditures and to measure impact after an initiative.

In this webinar, David Witt, program director at The Ken Blanchard Companies, teams up with Dr. Paul Leone, author of the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact: Bridging the Gap between Training and Business Results to show you how to identify anticipated fiscal impact of a leadership training initiative and how to measure it in a cost-effective manner after the training is finished.

You’ll learn:

• How to calculate the return on investment for your leadership training initiative using Blanchard’s Leadership Training ROI Worksheet. (The worksheet will be provided to all registrants.)
• How to measure the impact of training using the methodology outlined in the book Measuring and Maximizing Training Impact
• How to improve the adoption of new leadership practices from the classroom to the work environment

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to quantify the impact of leadership training in proposals—and how to set up your training to deliver on expectations.

Register today!

It doesn’t have to be an adversarial relationship, says Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“As gatekeeper of the financials, the CFO asks the questions. The learning and development professionals provide the models and numbers that make the case for a training expenditure. It’s about connecting the dots. CFOs love to have that kind of help during the budgeting process—it makes their job much easier.”

Connecting the dots is especially important for discretionary budget items such as training, says Spitz.

“Budget-wise, a lot of expenses are pretty standard from year to year. But purely discretionary items such as travel and training are the ones CFOs need to look at more closely. For these items, we use a zero-based budgeting approach.”

That means identifying not only what the money will be used for, but also some of the reasoning and rationale behind the request.

“If we can quantify some ROI and demonstrated impact through lowered expenses or increased revenue, we can examine the request further. The bottom line is, if you’re going to spend these dollars for training, you need to show a positive financial result.

“The only time this wouldn’t apply is when we have a directive from the top that says we are going to target a specific culture problem or engagement score. That’s a mandate where the board or CEO says, ‘We need training in this budget to address those issues.’  In that case, we are dealing with an untouchable budget item and will have to find cost savings elsewhere. But most of the time, discretionary spending like training needs to be connected to financial impact.”

Learning and development professionals can increase the odds of CFO approval if they identify the expected bottom-line impact ahead of time. And having the VP of human resources on board with the proposal is key.

“That’s your first person to convince,” says Spitz.  “Training initiatives will funnel up to budget discussions through the VP of HR. As CFO, one of my first questions is going to be to ask the VP of HR what they think. If that person is not on board, the training initiative is going to be a nonstarter.

“Ultimately, everybody is held responsible for delivering the identified operating profit. If the CEO believes an important expense or revenue item will be positively impacted by a training initiative, then that initiative will be part of the plan.”

It’s about connecting the dots, says Spitz. Anytime learning and development professionals come prepared with models, numbers, and rationale that help to make the case for training, they make the CFO’s job easier.

Would you like to learn more about successfully communicating to your CFO?  Then join us for a free webinar!

Making the Business Case for Training: Talking to the CFO

October 27, 2017, 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

One of the biggest challenges learning and development professionals face is making the business case for a proposed training initiative. It’s easy for a CFO to cut or delay funding when they don’t have a clear sense of the positive business impact a proposed initiative will provide.

In this webinar, leadership, learning, and talent development professionals will have a chance to ask questions and get coaching on how to build a sound financial rationale to go along with a proposed training agenda.

Craig Spitz, CFO at The Ken Blanchard Companies, will share some of the elements he looks for and some of the common pitfalls HR and OD professionals encounter when proposing new projects.

Participants will learn:

• How to enlist senior executives as champions
• How to calculate return on investment
• How to present information
• What to focus on—and what not to focus on

Participants will also have an opportunity to ask Craig questions and get the valuable perspective of a seasoned and successful CFO.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, together with peers, how to tackle the budgeting and approval process—and give your next training initiative its best opportunity for approval!

Register today!

In some places, coaching is still perceived as remedial help but I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that no organization is investing in that anymore. Coaching today is for the high potentials and the most valuable players.

At Blanchard Coaching Services, we coach people in organizations. The people we coach are capable, highly intelligent, and endowed with a remarkable work ethic and a drive to succeed.

Coaching works for these folks because each of our clients sees themselves as a hero or heroine of their own fantastic journey. Their coach is a reminder of who they are and where they are going.  Each of our clients is like Luke Skywalker and their coach is their Yoda.  Anyone up to something truly worthwhile could use a Yoda. Thomas Leonard, one of my many mentors and coaches, once said something that has become a mantra for me: “Anything worth doing is worth getting help with.”

And yet, as a one of the founding members of the International Coach Federation, I am deep in the conversation about how to train Yodas and how to regulate the practice of being Yoda for people.  It is complicated. The public needs to be protected from people without the skills or mindset of an accredited coach. Coaching skills alone are not enough, however, and assessing the competence of coaches is inexact at best.

In an article for Choice magazine entitled Avoiding the Iceberg, my pal Terrie Lupberger writes about the rules that can help a coach do just that.

David Goldsmith, who was my coach at a critical moment in my career, believes that soon, “good enough” coaches will be replaced by artificial intelligence.  He is worried that there is no one teaching good coaches how be great coaches.  Unlike Yoda, we don’t have the option of the benefit of 700 years of experience. Goldsmith defines the masterful coach as someone who has the discernment and judgment to choose the right tool from their massive toolbox to share with the client.

In his article Do Great Coaches Break the Rules? Goldsmith writes: “Most long-standing coaches not only fluidly and fluently dance between the distinctions of coaching, consulting, counseling, and training, they also are constantly customizing solutions and approaches for their clients from an eclectic and deep repertoire of methods, processes, and skills.   The current ‘rules’ don’t include this behavior in the usual definitions of coaching.”

In my own article, What Are We So Afraid of? I outline the polarity between asking and telling that a coach needs to navigate to be of true service to the client.

Food for thought for anyone interested in this ongoing philosophical debate.

As Yoda would say, “Invited are your insights!”

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is the co-founder of The Ken Blanchard Companies’ Coaching Services team.  Since 2000, Blanchard’s 150 coaches have worked with over 14,500 individuals in more than 250 companies throughout the world. Learn more at Blanchard Coaching Services. And check out Coaching Tuesday every week at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

Without a clear sense of the positive financial impact, it’s easy for a leader to dismiss a new proposal as being too disruptive, too expensive, or too time consuming.

An analysis of more than 200 organizations by The Ken Blanchard Companies found that every year of delay in improving leadership skills costs the typical organization an amount equal to 7 percent of their total annual sales.  This represents millions of dollars each year—because poor leadership behaviors not only increase the loss of high potential employees, they also lower the employee work passion and productivity of the people who remain with the company.

Employee Retention

Research originally conducted by Leigh Branham, a leading authority on turnover and retention and author of The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, identified that at least 9 percent and possibly as much as 32 percent of an organization’s voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills. Branham, who partnered with Pricewaterhouse Coopers in conducting the study, identifies that trust, hope, worth, and competence are at the core of most voluntary separations.  When employees are not getting their needs met in these key areas, they begin to look elsewhere.

Employee Work Passion

Research conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies using its Employee Work Passion Assessment has found significant correlation between positive work intentions and a leader’s ability to build trust, use coaching behaviors, and create an engaging work environment. This environment includes high levels of Meaningful Work, Autonomy, Growth, Fairness, Collaboration, and Feedback, along with six other factors (see complete list here.) Failure in any of these areas on the part of the leader leads to lowered intentions on the part of employees to perform at a high level, apply discretionary effort, remain with an organization, endorse it to others, and act as a good corporate citizen.

Employee Productivity

Providing employees with the tools, resources, direction, and support they need to perform at their best is the key to creating a high performance work environment. Research conducted by Dr. Paul Leone with a large Fortune 100 financial services company involving 300 managers and 1,200 direct reports found a 5 to 12 percent increase in productivity among direct reports of managers who attended leadership development training and immediately began using the new skills they had learned.

Leadership Impacts the Bottom Line

Leadership matters! After all, leaders help employees set goals. Leaders make sure those goals are in alignment with overall corporate strategy. And leaders are responsible for providing the direction and support employees need to succeed on a daily basis.

Even though a leadership development initiative—like any change—can be disruptive, difficult, and financially challenging, taking no action is often the most expensive option of all.

Most executives instinctively know that strong leadership is essential for overall organizational success. By evaluating and improving leadership practices throughout their organization, leadership, learning, and talent development professionals can remove a persistent drain on financial performance and allow their organizations to grow and thrive.

# # #

Want to learn more about quantifying the impact of leadership training?  Join us for a free webinar!

Making the Business Case for Leadership Training

Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 9:00 am Pacific Daylight Time

Organizations lose millions of dollars each year due to poorly trained leaders. In this webinar, David Witt, researcher and author of The Ken Blanchard Companies eBook 7 Ways Poor Leaders Are Costing Your Company Money, will share how poor managerial behaviors negatively impact engagement, alignment, productivity, and employee retention.

Drawing on original research conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies, Dave will explore:

• The 7 biggest gaps between employee expectations and leader behaviors
• The 3 ways to measure the bottom-line impact of leadership training
• The 5 keys to leadership training that works

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to evaluate your current level of leadership readiness, how to measure the impact of your leadership development, and how to get started on deploying training that makes an immediate difference. The event is free, courtesy of The Ken Blanchard Companies.

Register here!

Blanchard points to research that shows most managers don’t receive that necessary training, however, until they are about ten years into their managerial career.

“The effects are damaging at both an individual and organizational level,” says Blanchard. “More than 60 percent of new managers underperform or fail in their first two years.  And those who survive without managerial training often find themselves with negative habits that are hard to break—which can hold them back for years to come.”

With over two million new people stepping up to leadership for the first time each year in the US alone, Blanchard believes organizations need to take management training a lot more seriously.

“It is very important that those responsible for organizational training put together an effective curriculum for developing people into trusted professional managers. As a professional manager, you are responsible for what your direct reports do, and to some degree, how they feel—especially the emotional connection they establish with their job and the company.”

While some people’s influence and communication skills come naturally, every manager can learn and develop the skills they need regardless of their starting point, says Blanchard.

“Some people naturally understand how to work with others collaboratively and how to build rapport, while others come to leadership from a less developed starting point. But you still need a system if you are going to succeed as a manager. It’s something everyone can benefit from.”

According to Blanchard, all great managers do four things:

“Great managers begin by establishing clarity for their people through clear goals, accountability, and personal responsibility.  Second, they intervene appropriately when things are going well—and when things aren’t going well. Third, they adapt their leadership style to what is needed by appropriately identifying a direct report’s development level on a task and then modifying their style to best serve the direct report at that stage.

“Finally, great managers know how to create long term, long lasting relationships that are evidenced by trust and engagement over time.  This results in people who stay with the organization, talk positively about the organization to others, and perform at high levels in a collaborative manner.”

Blanchard explains that effective managers connect the dots between the work of the person, the work of the unit, and the work of the organization as a whole. They understand the correlation of action, motivation, and commitment. They successfully manage both performance and employee satisfaction.

“Great managers help people see the bigger picture from whatever seat they occupy,” says Blanchard, “and that can be a challenge.  People’s careers rise and fall and managers need to be there with coaching skills to help people through the ups and downs—even when there isn’t a clear path forward.

“These powerful skills almost always have to be developed through training—and once learned, they can help people focus and find a way forward in any situation.”

Interested in learning more about designing a leadership development curriculum for the managers in your organization? Join us for a free webinar!

Creating an Effective Leadership Development Curriculum—3 Essential Components

Online—July 25, 2017 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time

Great managers aren’t born—they’re trained. In this webinar, best-selling business author and consultant Scott Blanchard identifies the essential ingredients of a comprehensive leadership development program, starting with a first-time manager curriculum and moving through intermediate and advanced skills managers need to bring out the best in people.

Drawing on his company’s experience successfully training hundreds of thousands of managers for more than thirty years, Blanchard will share:

• Four communication skills and four conversations new managers need to master
• Three goal setting, diagnosing, and matching skills intermediate level managers need to learn
• Four specialized coaching skills that help advanced managers cope with management situations that are shifting or otherwise uncertain

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to put together a proven leadership development program in your organization!

Register today!

“Managers need to know how to set clear goals, diagnose development levels, and determine the correct leadership style to bring out the best in people. That’s a foundational management framework,” Blanchard says.

“But after that, managers need to take a deeper dive into the leadership styles we identify as Coaching and Supporting.  We’ve found through our research that 75 percent of the time, these two leadership styles are needed most to match the development level of a direct report on a task.”

“Most experienced managers are comfortable with setting goals and holding people accountable for achieving them, but they still need to work on providing direction and support along the way.”

Blanchard recommends that learning and development professionals add a coaching module into their leadership training curriculum. In his experience, a coaching module provides managers with enhanced skills in three key areas: day-to-day coaching, conversations beyond performance management, and conversations that focus on career growth.

“A manager who uses the coaching process can better guide a direct report in identifying a problem and looking at options. A coaching mindset is also helpful in areas that aren’t specifically related to a task, such as conversations between manager and direct report that focus on career or personal development. Managers have to get the work done, but there is an implied expectation that a manager will also be ready to help an employee see the bigger picture regarding their development—both personally and professionally within the organization.”

Trust as a Foundation

Blanchard recommends that L&D professionals also look at adding a trust module into their curriculum. He highlights the four pillars of interpersonal trust taught in his company’s Building Trust program—being perceived as Able, Believable, Connected, and Dependable. Blanchard highlights the word perceived because trust is ultimately determined by each direct report’s perceptions and experiences of the manager’s behavior.

“Managers need to know how they stand in their employees’ eyes against these four components of trust. Good management starts with the realization that leadership is a partnership.  From there, you learn a mindset of service—because leadership is all about serving others in pursuit of common goals. Finally, you make sure your behaviors match your intentions. By participating in a curriculum that includes trust and coaching skills, you can learn to be the type of leader who always provides the right amount of direction and support and helps everyone win.”

To learn more about Blanchard’s recommendations for creating a complete leadership development curriculum, check out his full interview in the March issue of Ignite. Looking to learn more about bringing trust and coaching skills into your leadership development program? Join Blanchard for a free webinar he is hosting on March 29—Creating an Integrated Curriculum: Coaching, Trust, and Situational Leadership® II.

IMPROVING LEADERSHIP ONE CONVERSATION AT A TIME

Executive coach Madeleine Blanchard held the phone to her ear, listening attentively as her newest client explained the problem she was having communicating with her direct reports. “They say that I’m not a good listener. I’m trying to connect, but it just doesn’t seem to be working. Any suggestions?”

Blanchard thought for a moment and replied, “Well, I can hear you typing right now, so I suspect you are actually answering emails while we talk. Do you do that when you are with your people? What would it be like if you actually gave each person your undivided attention?” READ MORE 

MANAGING IN A BUSY WORLD

Managers are struggling to find the time to have needed conversations with colleagues and direct reports. Ann Phillips, a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies, knows this firsthand.   “I always ask leaders ‘How many of you have enough of your own work to do each day?’

The leaders in class typically tell me that every day they have 8 to 12 hours of their own work that doesn’t include addressing the needs of their direct reports.  Lack of time kills many good intentions.” People want to be better leaders, says Phillips, but they don’t have the open space in their schedules. READ MORE 

CREATING A DEEPER CONNECTION AT WORK

You have to put yourself out there if you want to create an authentic connection with people. Sharing your Leadership Point of View is one of the most powerful ways to accomplish that, according to coaching expert Joni Wickline.

“Your Leadership Point of View is about the people and events that have shaped who you are. It also speaks to your values, your beliefs, and what drives you as a leader.” Wickline says creating a Leadership Point of View is an emotional journey and a lot of leaders play it safe when first given the chance to share. READ MORE

MID-LEVEL MANAGERS: TAKING CARE OF THE HEART OF THE HOUSE

Scott Blanchard, principal and EVP at The Ken Blanchard Companies, likes to use the phrase heart of the house to describe the important role middle managers play in an organization. In Blanchard’s experience, if mid-level management is neglected, the result is a slow-moving organization that doesn’t respond well to feedback.

Blanchard says that to be successful, middle managers must be skilled in communicating what is expected and how it is to be achieved.  That means connecting the dots from the boardroom to the frontlines. If middle management is ineffective, the staff both above and below this level suffers. READ MORE

ALL GOOD PERFORMANCE STARTS WITH CLEAR GOALS

The ability to set goals effectively is a key managerial skill. It’s also the key to being a successful individual contributor, according to leadership expert and best-selling author Ken Blanchard.

“All good performance starts with clear goals. If people don’t know what you want them to accomplish, what are the chances they will be successful? Not very good. “Peter Drucker used to say, ‘If you can’t measure something, you can’t manage it.’ Measurements are important to give both managers and direct reports more clarity when assessing performance.” READ MORE

The most shared topics include coaching tips for leaders, biggest mistakes, and “the #1 thing I’d wish I known before becoming a manager.” A great cross section of advice. Be sure to check each out—and maybe share with the people you know also!

The Number One Thing I Wish I’d Known BEFORE Becoming a Manager

By Randy Conley

Becoming a manager for the first time is a significant career milestone. It is both exciting and nerve-wracking stepping into a role where you are now responsible for others and not just yourself. If that’s you, a new manager, remember the number one priority.

What Is The Biggest Mistake Leaders Make When Working with Others? (Infographic)

By David Witt

It is essential for new managers to develop good communication skills as they step into their first leadership roles. Becoming skilled in each of these areas not only helps new managers get off to a great start but also can help them succeed for years to come. How are your managers doing in these critical areas?

8 Personal Qualities for Success: A Coach’s Perspective

By Madeleine Blanchard

With focus, assistance from others, and a disciplined, patient, persistent approach, a coach can help a client attack each component and stay with the job as long as it takes. And a little pinch of luck never hurts!

10 Ways Leaders Aren’t Making Time for their Team Members (Infographic)

By David Witt

Researchers from The Ken Blanchard Companies teamed up with Training magazine to poll 456 human resource and talent-management professionals. The purpose was to determine whether established best practices were being leveraged effectively.

Four Tips for Being Fully Present with People

By Terry Watkins

When you are fully present with team members, you listen more deeply and also from a curiosity perspective. As a result, team members—like clients—feel heard, understood, and acknowledged. This leads to people feeling safe and secure in their partnership with you. It also increases trust.

Hi Madeleine,

I am a hotel manager for a high end property in a large metropolitan city.

I am trying to create a program where department heads and midlevel managers at the hotel can come together to chat candidly about their career goals and how to achieve them. I have a vision to devote 30 to 60 minutes each week to this new program. 

Any suggestions on what sort of things I should focus on in that time duration?

I’d also appreciate your suggestions on what to call these meetings so it sends a good message. Thanks for any feedback. 

Developer

Dear Developer,

Well, isn’t your team lucky to have you! I applaud your desire to develop people; it’s not as common an idea as you might think—despite our best efforts to spread the word.

With the amount of time you are devoting, it will be important to generate consistent value that hits your goals. I have some thoughts about how to do that:

• First, get input. Ask the folks you’re inviting a couple of questions, such as: “What would make you attend?” “What would you want to get out of it?” “What would you want to give?”
• Second, you might want to think about starting with a small cohort of your very best people. Meet someplace nice, make it visible, and spread the word that the group is by invitation only. This way when people are invited to join, they feel singled out for something positive. The group is seen as a reward—an elevation of status.
• Don’t be surprised if people are a little skittish at first about sharing their aspirations. It may make them feel exposed and vulnerable. They need to feel safe before they open up. Starting with something relatively broad like discussing current goals. Ask each person for one goal they would want to share with the group to get accountability and support. By choosing what to reveal, they feel a sense of control.
• Consider discussing higher level management topics like servant leadership, building trust, managing change, leading teams, personal development, or time management, to name a few. Invest in a couple of good leadership books—I’d suggest you start with the greats (Drucker, Bennis, Maxwell, Dupree, Blanchard, Collins, or Goldsmith, for example) and discuss concepts from them.
• For those who don’t consider reading that much fun, excellent lists are available of current top management thinkers. Provide links to short blog posts for ideas that spark discussion.
• Alternatively, each session could be driven by a question such as: What makes a good leader? How should a leader deal with someone who is late all the time? What do you know you should be doing as a manager but don’t quite know how?

In terms of what you might call your group, consider tying the name of the group to one of the stated values of your organization. For example, a value at Zappos is to “Deliver Wow with service.” They might call a group like yours The Wow Club.

Here are some other idea starters: Future Focus Conversations, Career Maps, Plan A Club , Brainstormers, Opportunity League, Look Ahead Club, Onward and Upward, Growth Guild, Career Club, Career Alliance, Rising Stars, or Talent Incubator.

There is always the possibility of a clever acronym—maybe something like LEAD—Leadership Exploration And Development, or MILE—Maximum Impact Leadership Effectiveness.

(You might get more ideas in the comments.)

Do let me know how this works out!

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

Dear Madeleine,

I am a manager who has done well at a professional services company. I run a large and growing group of entry level professionals who manage logistics and customer service for the entire organization.

I absolutely love my job. I enjoy helping people be successful as well as being seen as someone who adds value to the company.

Here is my problem: our organization is growing so fast that other departments keep pinching my people!

We are dedicated to hiring from the inside and giving people the opportunity to grow, and I love seeing my team members succeed. But I’m getting tired of having to constantly hire and train new people. It’s happening so much that I’m starting to feel taken advantage of. What to do?

Robbed

Dear Robbed,

Congratulations! The reward for excellent work is … more work. And the reward for being a developer of people is watching them move up to bigger and better jobs. It stinks for you, but you might feel better about things if you shift your outlook. Otherwise, it won’t be long before your feeling of being taken advantage of deepens to resentment. And, as they say, resentment is like taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. Don’t let that happen!

Here are some ideas:

Spread your impact: You love helping people be successful so it is a good idea to stay focused on that. Be intentional about expanding the love. Maybe you could set up a little deal with your people—a kind of pay-it-forward plan. Tell them you will do everything in your power to develop them and help them achieve their professional goals. In return, you ask that they do the same with their own people once they start supervising others, so that your positive actions will continue on both in your organization and ultimately out in the world as your people grow and move to other employers.

Systematize your hiring: Accept the reality of your situation and get ahead of it. Become friends with your company’s recruiter if you aren’t already, and discuss the situation with that person. The constant call for new hires creates a need for you to keep a pipeline of potentials. Identify places where you can look for newbies entering the workforce—local schools, perhaps? Spread the word with career or job counselors that you hire regularly, so that they will send you their best candidates. Make your situation clear on your LinkedIn page—lots of people use LinkedIn to hunt for job opportunities. This way, you will have people coming to you and won’t feel like you are starting from scratch each time you need to fill a position.

Automate your onboarding: It is tedious to have to repeat the same new hire training over and over. Create a manual, make some videos, and delegate some of the sharing of details. And have the departing people train their replacement before they go.

Get Recognized: You may actually be the last person to figure out that this is happening, but if your people keep getting pinched it is because your colleagues are on to your talent! So talk to your boss about arranging an incentive and recognition plan for your extra work. Maybe you should get a bonus every time one of your people is plucked? Or if money isn’t a motivator, ask yourself what would be.

Finally, enjoy the fact that you are a force for good in the world—and that a huge group of people will always remember you as one of their best bosses.

Love, Madeleine

About the author

Madeleine Homan-Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

At the top, managers identified communication skills, help with transitioning to a leadership role, and interpersonal skills as the most needed training.

In the middle, they identified setting goals, directing others, and managing conflict as next most important.

In the last four slots, the respondents identified training on delegating tasks, dealing with performance issues, understanding HR policies, and conducting performance reviews as somewhat less important.

Scott Blanchard, a principal with The Ken Blanchard Companies and coauthor of the company’s new First-time Manager program prioritizes a similar list in the September issue of Ignite.

“A new generation of managers is moving forward. But we’ve found that first-time managers are not getting the training they need in key areas—including communication skills, transitioning to a new role as manager, and interpersonal skills. As a result, more than half of the people we surveyed said they were not prepared for their first manager role.”

Blanchard highlights results from the same survey showing that only 39 percent of new managers with fewer than 3 years on the job reported having received any leadership training. Just 34 percent had received any mentoring. And a mere 31 percent had received coaching.

According to Blanchard, if new managers are going to succeed, organizations need to be more consistent and proactive in their approach. Otherwise, managers are left to their own devices with mixed results. In fact, research from CEB indicates that as many as 60 percent of new managers underperform or fail within their first two years.

“With over two million millennials stepping into first time leadership roles each year in the US alone, we need to take steps immediately to better train new managers for their first roles,” says Blanchard.

To address this, Blanchard recommends that organizations focus their new manager training curriculum on two areas: communication skills and conducting work-related management conversations.

“We teach communication skills drawn from our Coaching Essentials program—including Listening, Inquiring, Telling Your Truth, and Expressing Confidence.  Then we take a deeper dive into four conversations we feel are foundational for new managers: Goal Setting, Praising, Redirecting, and Wrapping Up.

Blanchard’s goal is to increase the winning percentages of new managers one conversation at a time.

“Our work relationships are contained and maintained in our conversations. Every interaction you have with an employee moves that relationship in a positive or negative direction. We believe the quality of a relationship over time is a result of the net impact of all the different conversations that have occurred.”

You can read more about Blanchard’s approach to first-time manager development in the September issue of Ignite.  Also be sure to check out the webinar Blanchard is conducting later in the month, Management 101: Developing a Leadership Curriculum for New Managers.  It’s free, courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

PS: Use these links to download a PDF or PNG version of the infographic.

We were correct. Our guide, Joe, had been a whitewater guide for twenty years. He had knowledge, experience, and a passion for his work.

Joe’s approach was completely different than that of the less experienced guides. He started with the basics: front paddle, back paddle, right and left turns, and the term brace, which means to lean in and hang on for dear life. We got really good at that one!

The other guides also went through the basics at the start of the trip, but what separated Joe from the pack is what he did once we were on the river. Before each set of rapids, Joe had us pull over into an eddy—or, as we liked to call it, a parking spot. Each time we did this, we spent at least five minutes in the eddy before going into the rapids.

First, Joe studied the water, making note of obstacles and how the water was flowing—or not flowing—around them. He looked for holes, logs, and anything else that might be a hazard for our boat. Joe had a plan in place for each section of rapids.

Then he focused on us. He went over all of his original instructions and had us practice each maneuver. He emphasized that when he yelled “Stop!” he meant it, and we needed to lift our paddles out of the water.

As we were going over these details, we watched the boats with the less experienced guides go by without stopping. Most were paddling full speed into the rapids without pausing at all. We saw many of them tip over, get stuck, or experience what’s known as unscheduled swimmers—the term used for people who fall out of the boat. Fortunately, nobody got hurt, but there were some close calls.

In contrast, our boat moved slowly and quite gracefully through the raging water as we followed Joe’s directions as closely as we could. Each time, we took the safest route—which, by the way, was usually the most fun as well. None of our crew fell out of the boat, nor did we hit any rocks. The boat stayed flat in the water just like it was supposed to. Joe was master of the river and we were a high performing team.

So what lessons for organizations can you take from whitewater rafting with a skilled guide? Here are a few:

• When you are looking for a guide or mentor, look for the person with the most expertise. They may not be someone you necessarily would choose for a friend, but you can learn from them. Remember that with age often comes wisdom (okay, not always) so don’t discount the ones with grey hair.
• Take time to plan and practice before you get into the whitewater. Be clear on your roles, your communication plan, and your purpose—ours was to be safe and have fun. This can be time consuming, but in the end it will help you move more quickly through the challenges. Also, be sure to have more than one contingency plan in place before you begin.
• Train your team on the knowledge and skills they need to safely navigate the whitewater, then reinforce often. Many times, training becomes a check-off-the-box activity without any reinforcement. This also takes time, but it will make the process flow much easier.
• Give yourself permission to hurry less and plan more. It is not always easy to stop action, but it is well worth the effort.
• Enjoy the whitewater! You always have a choice in whether to feel stressed or exhilarated. Why not choose the latter as often as you can?

About the Author

Kathleen Martin is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Martin’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.

In a new article for Training Industry Magazine, “Why Do We Wait to Train Our Managers?” leadership experts Ken Blanchard and Scott Blanchard share that companies rarely think about providing training to someone making the transition into their first leadership position until the individual actually settles into their new role—or later. For example, the average tenure of people enrolling in their new First-time Manager training program is two years.

And research by Jack Zenger of leadership consultancy Zenger Folkman has found that most managers don’t receive training until they have been in a leadership role for almost ten years!

This is much too long of a delay—and it underestimates just how difficult it is to manage the work of others. As a result, CEB research has found that 60 percent of new managers underperform in their first two years—with negative consequences for both new manager and direct reports.

That’s a shame, say the Blanchards, considering how much better things could be for everyone if leaders would receive the training they need when they step into a new job on day one.

So Why Do We Wait?

Why don’t organizations train new leaders earlier in their careers?  The Blanchards believe it may be a holdover from the past, when training was cost prohibitive and organizations would invest only in people who were definitely going to remain with the company.  Although this may have made some sense in the past when training was a two-or three-day classroom event, the arrival of blended and virtual options has dramatically reduced the cost involved. Their advice?

“Don’t hold your best people back—in fact, don’t hold anyone back. Why not train everybody who desires it? One thing we’ve learned in working with clients is that the people who raise their hand and ask to be included in leadership training are the people who end up being the best leaders in your organization. Show everyone you value them and are willing to invest in their development.

“We can do better than allowing 60 percent of our new managers to underperform.  With inclusive policies that identify and provide people with the training they need, we can greatly improve this statistic to the benefit of new managers, their direct reports, and organizations as a whole.”

You can access the complete article from Training Industry Magazine here.  For more information on the Blanchard approach to first-time manager training, take a look at the extended article “Essential Skills Every First-Time Manager Should Master”.

In a recent post for VeryWell, Kendra Cherry, author of The Everything Psychology Book, identifies ten ways learners can help themselves be more effective.  Out of the ten, my favourites are these:

Keep learning (and practising) new things. Let’s take learning a new language: You have to keep practising in order to become fluent. The best way is to live in the country in which the language is spoken and be immersed in it; otherwise, you can forget what you have learned. The same can be said when you have just taken a training course. If you don’t keep practising what you have learned, you will forget.

Teach what you’ve learned to another person. Teaching other people what you have learned embeds the learning. If you take a training course, go back to your organisation and talk to your colleagues or team about what you have learned. It will not only help embed your learning, it will also help create a shared learning environment.

In an article for Training Journal entitled “Making eLearning More Engaging for Your Learners,” writer Duncan Brown looks at ways to increase learner engagement for more successful eLearning.  Brown shares that 75 percent of learners are happy to engage in online learning. However, 44 percent of L&D leaders say employees are reluctant to engage in online learning. Online content needs to be inspiring and engaging to capture the audience. Brown suggests that the click next model will not keep participants engaged.

Looking to apply some of these concepts to your training design?  Here are three ways to get started, based on three types of training.

Face-to-Face Classroom or Instructor-Led Training

Classroom training is still a highly effective training technique and offers support and guidance in real time.

• Add some highly interactive videos. YouTube receives 250,000 visits per second. It has 4 billion hours of content that is viewed each month. People like to watch videos to learn, rather than simply reading from a book. Dr Itiel Dror suggests that training should incorporate videos and involve learners by having them answer questions and determine errors and hazards. Brandon Hall found that videos used in training offer high level of engagement and are highly effective.
• Make the content relevant to the person/organization. When detailing case studies or examples, ensure they are relevant to the organization and make them relatable. When people can see how a principle would work in their workplace, it is easier to understand and apply.

Asynchronous Learning

Asynchronous is a great way for busy people to learn content at their own pace; however, it cannot be done in isolation. Participants need to have interaction with others by discussing how the learning can be used in practise and talking about how the content can be applied to real life.

• Include quizzes or other ways to test the learning.
• Create a community by having an online forum where people can chat with each other.
• Have an instructor who can guide the e-learning.

Virtual Classroom

Training people virtually is great for a dispersed workforce; it saves time and money on travel. We all know that when we are on virtual calls and can’t be seen, we tend to procrastinate and multitask. So ensure your training is interactive.

• Use breakout rooms. When people are in smaller groups and have a part to play, they are more interactive and present.
• Use polls throughout the training to ensure people are still there.
• Assign tasks before the training to ensure people feel part of the group.

Now imagine if you mixed all of the above together in a training programme, or at least had options to learn the content in different learning modalities. Why not learn the content asynchronously, practise face-to-face and have sustainability virtually? Keep people engaged, mix it up a little, and practise, practise, practise!

A survey of 450 human resource and talent management professionals by Training magazine and The Ken Blanchard Companies found gaps of 24–39 percent between what employees wanted from their leaders and what they were experiencing in 10 key areas.

Performance management is a key leadership responsibility. This survey suggests that significant gaps exist between employee expectations and what they are experiencing at work. And research shows that left unaddressed, these gaps represent a drain on overall organizational vitality through lowered employee intentions to stay, endorse, and apply discretionary effort as needed.

Better Communication Is the Key

For leadership development professionals, these survey results point to the need for including workplace communication skills as a key part of any leadership curriculum. For example, in Blanchard’s First-time Manager program new leaders are taught four key conversations:

Goal Setting: All good performance begins with clear goals. New managers usually prefer to be seen as supportive and try to avoid appearing overly directive—but that approach can backfire as soon as the first project deadlines are in jeopardy or performance standards aren’t being met. Being skilled at goal setting helps people start off on the right foot.

Praising: Ask some people how they know they are doing a good job and they will say, “No one yelled at me today.” Don’t make the mistake of not noticing. Are managers taking the time to catch people doing things right by calling out a team member’s specific behavior and the positive impact it had when they do things right?

Redirecting: When managers are not skilled at redirecting, they tend to be either unduly critical or so vague that the direct report walks away not sure what to do next. Do managers know how to use open ended inquiry questions to get the other person to talk about what is happening and ways to get back on track? Redirecting conversations are best when the direct report is doing most of the talking.

Wrapping Up: Are managers providing feedback on a frequent and consistent basis? A wrapping up conversation allows managers to measure success, review performance, and keep things moving forward. This is not a once-a-year conversation—it has to happen after the completion of each task or project if you want good results.

A renewed focus on improving workplace communication can have significant results on the performance of an organization. How’s the everyday leadership in your organization? Strong operational leadership with a focus on better communication is the key.

Is your organization experiencing heart trouble?  This can be not only frustrating, but also damaging to performance in today’s fast paced business environment that requires a lean and agile approach.

Blanchard explains, “Managers working in the heart of the house play a couple of different roles. First, senior leaders look to middle managers to put goals and action plans in place to achieve strategic results.  But that is just one side of the coin.  Middle managers are also responsible for the environment in which the work is accomplished. So the middle manager’s job is twofold: to get things done and also to manage people’s emotional relationships to their work, their company, and their coworkers. Middle managers set the tone for the workplace.”

Blanchard says that to be successful, middle managers must be skilled in communicating what is expected and how it is to be achieved.  That means connecting the dots from the boardroom to the frontlines. If middle management is ineffective, the staff both above and below this level suffers.

This can be a challenge if managers don’t get the training and support they need.

“If managers are not getting the support they need from the organization to grow and to meet challenges, they can feel stuck in the middle. When this happens, mid-level managers can become disengaged and fall back into transacting business with their people in a way that causes the people to not care as much, to not understand as much about the importance of their work, and to not be as connected to the mission and vision of the company as they could be.”

The good news, according to Blanchard, is that there are approaches organizations can use to help mid-level managers get things done and build commitment in a way that creates positive regard and advocacy from employees.

Blanchard points to a couple of programs in The Ken Blanchard Companies portfolio as examples.

“It’s important to take a foundational approach when helping managers develop skills. The goal is to provide a framework managers can use to guide performance. Two of our training programs can help: Situational Leadership® II, which is our flagship product and the most widely taught leadership framework in the world; and our new First-time Manager program, which is designed specifically for people stepping into leadership for the first time. Both programs teach managers important skills including how to effectively set goals, how to provide day-to-day coaching and support, how to engage in a partnership with direct reports, and how to have effective discussions around performance.”

On the emotional side of the equation, Blanchard refers to the Building Trust and Optimal Motivation programs as examples of content designed to help managers create a safe and engaged environment where people thrive.

“It’s about having useful conversations.  Leadership is about getting things done with and through people. Performance and results are one side of the coin and environment and commitment are the other side. You can’t do one without the other.”

You can read more of Blanchard’s thinking on taking care of your middle managers in the May issue of Ignite.  Also, check out a complimentary webinar he is conducting on June 1, Designing a Leadership Curriculum for the Heart of Your Organization.  It’s free—courtesy of Cisco WebEx and The Ken Blanchard Companies.

“As an individual contributor, your focus is on doing the work, getting projects done, and meeting deadlines. But when you switch into a manager role, it means that you have to help others get the work done and ensure that they have the support, resources, and encouragement they need to be successful, both as individuals and as a group.”

When it comes to relationships, Miller uses the simple example of lunch behaviors to make her point.

“When we are peers, I get to go to lunch and we talk about personal things and sometimes we talk about our manager. But when I become the manager, I’m not always invited to those lunches. A new manager can sometimes feel lonely because they’re not included in the conversation.”

Jay Campbell, vice president of product development for The Ken Blanchard Companies—who will also be speaking as a part of the Livecast event—explains that first-time managers often find themselves with too much or too little help when they step into their first role. On the too-little side, many new managers  receive only a few hours of initial training in their first week, focused primarily on how to fill out timesheets, manage PTO, or maybe some compliance training—but not a lot that helps them master the skills of new management. On the too-much side, some training programs can consist of 10 to 15 modules, which can leave first-time managers completely overwhelmed before they get a chance to apply any of their new learnings.

Ken Blanchard believes the secret is to apply the 80/20 rule when developing training curriculum for new managers: 80 percent of the performance and results you want will come from 20 percent of what you focus on. Blanchard recommends first-time managers begin with a focus on goal setting, praising, and redirection.

“You want to make sure all of your people are clear on what you are asking them to do, and that they know what good behavior looks like.”

Becoming skilled at three types of conversations helps to set that up:  a Goal Setting Conversation, a Praising Conversation, and a Redirect Conversation.

“All good performance starts with clear goals,” explains Blanchard. “Once people are clear on goals, you need to get out of your office, wander around and see if you can catch them doing something right.”

For performance that isn’t going in the right direction, Blanchard recommends that first-time managers master the One Minute Re-direct.

“Go to the person and tell them the behavior you are observing. Talk to them about it and see how you can get their performance back on track. You don’t want to wait for a long time if performance isn’t going well. You want to catch it early.  It’s not about punishment; it’s just getting people going in the direction they need to go.”

To find out more about the First-Time Manager Livecast and how a minute can make all the difference, be sure to check out the registration page at www.kenblanchard.com/livecast.  (Over 3,000 people are already registered for this free event.) Blanchard, Miller, and Campbell will be joined by other consultants as well as both new and experienced managers. They will all share tips and strategies to help new leaders succeed in their first leadership assignment.

So what are the advantages to spending part of your organization’s learning budget on coaching?  Coaching principles benefit the individual and the organization in several areas.

• Coaching engages the learner and encourages ownership by drawing out the learning that comes with training. Creating or discovering solutions helps the employee feel empowered.
• Coaching focuses on the learner’s specific needs quickly, concisely, and in a way group training cannot.
• Coaching adapts to the learner’s preferred learning style which is easier to do on an individual basis than with a large training group.
• Coaching offers a more flexible approach to development than do group training programs.

In spite of these advantages, learning and development professionals sometimes find that it’s not easy to make a business case for expanding the use of coaching principles. Sound familiar?  Start with this step-by-step approach.

1. Assess what resources need to be in place to instill a culture of coaching by anticipating potential barriers and obstacles.
2. Specify investment costs, benefits, outcomes, and examples of success.
3. Link coaching to key metrics including strategic organizational goals, competencies, vision, and values.
4. List potential benefits of implementing coaching versus risks of not moving forward.
5. Identify executive allies and early adopters.

A coaching program can be combined with training or launched on its own by skilled managers, colleagues, or outside consultants. To help you as you build your plan, here are some of the more popular ways organizations apply coaching principles:

• Coaching to support learning. Research shows that productivity, retention, morale, and employee relationships improve dramatically when training is combined with coaching. In case studies where coaching was added to training, productivity rose 88 percent. Without coaching, productivity rose only 22 percent.
• Coaching as a leadership skill. Training leaders in coaching skills provides a way to create a safe, focused, and supportive environment for productive conversations. Research by Manchester Consulting shows that the use of coaching principles significantly improves working relationships among supervisors, direct reports, and their respective teams and demonstrates a 5:1 return on investment.
• Peer group coaching is another resource used increasingly with department and project teams. It offers a forum where people can not only learn about how colleagues are using their skills but also share successes and challenges.
• Executive coaching encourages leaders to take a step back and gain objective feedback, then challenges them with new ways of thinking and behaving. As a result, leaders are better able to focus on strategic areas of self improvement such as actions or attitudes that may limit their influence.

Coaching is a valuable medium for personal development that can dramatically help individuals and groups focus on purposeful action. Use these tips and resources to help you to tailor coaching to your organization’s needs and budget so that you can build your case for utilizing coaching principles throughout your organization.

About the Author

John Slater is a Senior Director, Client Solutions for The Ken Blanchard Companies working out of Blanchard’s Toronto, Ontario regional headquarters in Canada.

For this reason, I prefer to label these as core skills instead of soft skills. I’ve been using the term for 25 years, since I first heard a speaker extol their virtues. After the session, I suggested to the presenter that if these skills are so central to communication and maximizing effectiveness and contribution, they might be better regarded as core skills. To make a long story short, both the speaker and I used that term from that day on.

People are invariably the most expensive ongoing investment an organization makes—and a critical potential asset, if managed properly. Often, though, the management of this asset is treated as an afterthought until things go wrong. For example, recently in the U.K. a newly promoted manager successfully sued her company for not providing the promised training of leadership skills she needed. The result, she claimed, was stressful conflict in the office as well as sleepless nights, resulting in divorce and ill health. She won a substantial settlement.

While that may be an extreme case, many people are not adequately equipped for new management positions and subsequently leave organizations. When this occurs, it is a loss to the individual, the people they are supposed to manage, and the organization as a whole.

As a learning professional, how are you treating core skill development in your organization?  Is it an afterthought or is it a strategic directive?  Here are three ways to find out.

Evaluating your current situation

• Do you understand the organization’s key organizational goals, strategies, and objectives?
• Has the organization articulated a strong focus on people skills development as a critical part of its future success? How well are you positioned to affect this?

Identifying first steps

• Ensure that you have assessed the critical skills, competency needs, and current capabilities of your present and emerging leaders to meet present and future business objectives.
• Gain active support from senior leaders and line operations to ensure top priority of core skills training and the establishment of a learning culture.

Taking action

• Formulate company and individual training and development plans and obtain resources and programs as needed.
• Provide a comprehensive road map to acquire and support the application of core skills in the workplace.

Don’t let the development of so-called soft skills become a second-tier priority. These core skills are essential to the company’s vitality and effectiveness—and without them, your organization will not be able to meet the needs of the future.

About the Author

John Slater is a Senior Director, Client Solutions for The Ken Blanchard Companies working out of Blanchard’s Toronto, Ontario regional headquarters in Canada.

Grit

The other reminder came this week from my daughter’s fourth grade teacher, Mr. Cameron, who talked about having grit in his Tip of the Week.

Both shared how grit helps us push through challenges. They believe grit means hard work, not giving up, and always trying your best. Linda Kaplan Thaler shared the latest research on success and the strategies that helped her succeed at the highest levels in both her career and her personal life. Mr. Cameron was preparing the students for state testing. When I asked him about grit, he said, “There will be times when a question or task is going to be very challenging, and it’s important for our students to have a strong sense of what grit can do to help. Having grit means you’re not going to just guess and move on—it means you dig down, try your hardest, and work your way through the problem.”

Action Steps for Leaders

As leaders, we need to develop grit in ourselves as well as our people. In addition to digging down and trying hard, I’d like to suggest a third strategy—finding meaning. Here are a few ways to get started:

• Identify true passion. We inspire grit when we help our direct reports identify their true passion—something they love to do so much, they lose track of time. Think about the activities you love to do. When you are doing them, do you find yourself working harder to break through the barriers?
• Shift the motivational outlook. In our newly released Optimal Motivation learning program, we assist people in shifting their motivational outlook—finding a higher purpose for engaging in a goal or task. Susan Fowler, one of the authors of the program, talks about the importance of helping people discover how their jobs can meet deeper psychological needs. She shares scientific evidence that proves people find sustainable motivation when this discovery happens.
• Push the boundaries. Some of my best coaching experiences have been when a coach has said things such as “why not you?” and “write your ideal job and then go after it” and “manage your career to leverage your strengths and your passions.” More often than not, our self-talk limits our ability to push the boundaries. It’s that inner voice that says “I can’t” or “I’ll never be able to.” Help your people to push their perceived boundaries and set stretch goals. Be the positive voice and accountability coach they need.

Inspire your people

As Linda Kaplan Thayer shared, grit is showcased by people who have a deep motivation to do what they do. As managers, we can help our people tap into that motivation.

What do you believe inspires people to have grit? In my experience, it is a combination of a meaningful purpose and a will to succeed. Leaders have a role to play here. At the end of the day, leadership equates to influence and influence can inspire and generate motivation. Your leadership could be just what your people need to be able to push through challenges and showcase their grit.

About the Author

Joni Wickline is Vice President, Professional Services with The Ken Blanchard Companies. You can read Wickline’s posts as a part of Coaching Tuesday here at Blanchard LeaderChat for ideas, research, and inspirations from the world of executive coaching.