LUMINARY PERSPECTIVE

Be the Leader People Want and Organizations Need

Ken Blanchard

A while back, I sent out a Facebook post with a photo of a woman carrying a briefcase and jumping a hurdle, with the headline: Hire smart people, train them properly, then get out of their way.

That post received thousands more views than my usual posts. Something about that simple message really resonated with people. Why? I think it’s because people know that at its best, leadership is a side-by-side partnership that involves mutual trust and respect among people working together to achieve common goals. Leaders and their team members influence one another—they both play a role in figuring out how to get things done. In other words, leadership is about we, not me. As a talent development professional, you are an important part of the we in your organization. You must be the kind of leader your organization needs. You must model the kind of leader others want.

So, let’s focus in on three steps you can take to become the kind of leader people want and organizations need.

Hire Smart People

What should you look for when you have a position to fill in your department or company? First and foremost, you want someone who resonates with your organization’s values. Of course, the person needs to possess either the required skills for the position or the potential to develop those skills. You’re also looking for someone with the ability to think, plan, and communicate effectively. And it wouldn’t hurt if they showed initiative, creativity, confidence, and a desire to learn and grow. In short, you’re looking for a winner.

Our company’s careers webpage states:

Now let me pose this question: How often do you go out and hire losers? Sadly, too many organizations still use the normal distribution curve model, where managers are expected to rate only a few people high, a few people low, and the rest as average performers. That’s nonsense. Do you go around saying, “We lost some of our worst losers last year, so let’s hire some new ones to fill the low spots”? Of course not! You hire either winners or potential winners—people who can perform at the highest level.

Train Them Properly

After the initial onboarding period, even if a new hire has the technical skills to do a job, it’s essential that they receive continuing training and support. Too often leaders hire someone, give them some rudimentary training, and expect them to immediately become a winner. But great leaders don’t leave people to sink or swim. They support them through the three stages of an effective performance management system:

•  Performance planning—setting clear goals

•  Day-to-day coaching—providing feedback through praising, redirecting, and conducting regular one-on-one meetings

•  Performance review—getting an A

Performance Planning

As soon as a new hire is brought up to speed and shows an understanding of the organization’s vision and direction, it’s time for goal setting. All good performance starts with clear goals. Effective goal setting happens when leaders and individuals work together to agree on goals and objectives—what needs to be done, when, and how. It’s the leader’s job to ensure each team member understands what they are being asked to do (areas of accountability) and what a good job looks like (expected performance standards). After clear goals are established between the manager and team member, those goals should be written down and kept close at hand so they can be read in a minute or less and used as a reference to compare actual behavior to targeted behavior.

Goal setting is a powerful motivational tool in a leader’s toolkit. It provides purpose, challenge, and meaning. Goals energize people. They are the guideposts along the road that make the organizational vision come alive.

Day-to-Day Coaching

Once goals are agreed upon, effective leaders turn the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside-down so they can serve their people. When this happens, who is at the top of the organization? The frontline, customer-facing people. And who is at the bottom? The “top” management. As a result, who works for whom? You, the leader, work for your people. This change makes a major difference—the difference between who is responsible and who is responsive. When you turn the organizational pyramid upside-down, rather than your people being responsible to you, they become responsible (able to respond) to your customers. Your job as the leader is to be responsive to your people—to help them accomplish goals, solve problems, and live according to the organizational vision.

Day-to-day coaching is rarely given the attention it deserves as a significant aspect of managing people’s performance. Providing feedback—praising progress and redirecting inappropriate behavior—is important and needs to happen on an ongoing basis.

Praising

Someone once asked me, “If you had to give up every lesson you’ve ever taught over the years except one, which one would it be?” I answered that it would have to be the concept that the key to developing people is to catch them doing something right and give them praise.

An effective praising focuses on reinforcing behavior that moves people closer to their goals. It’s a good idea to not only praise goal achievement, but also praise progress toward a goal. When you catch someone doing something right or approximately right, follow these steps:

•  Praise the person as soon as you see or hear about what they did.

•  Let the person know what they did right—be specific.

•  Tell them how good you feel about what they did and how it contributes.

•  Encourage them to do more of the same and make it clear you support their future success.

Redirection

When people are still learning and are clear on a goal, but their performance isn’t quite up to standard, a redirection is effective. When a learner makes a mistake, follow these steps to help them get back on track:

•  Redirect the person as soon as possible after the error.

•  As the leader, be sure you have made the person’s goal clear. If not, be accountable and immediately clarify the goal.

•  Confirm the facts and review their misstep together. Be specific about what went wrong.

•  Let the individual know how you feel about the error and its impact on results.

•  Tell them you think well of them, know they are better than their mistake, and will continue to support them as they move toward goal achievement.

Remember, the ultimate aim of redirection is to build people up so they continue to learn, improve their skills, and achieve their goals.

One-on-One Meetings

My wife, Margie Blanchard, and our colleague Garry Demarest developed a one-on-one process that requires managers to hold 15-to-30-minute meetings at least once every two weeks with each of their direct reports. The manager is responsible for scheduling the meeting, but the direct report sets the agenda. This is when people can talk to their managers about anything on their hearts and minds—it’s their meeting. The purpose of one-on-ones is for managers and direct reports to get to know each other as human beings.

In the old days, most businesspeople had a traditional military attitude of, “Don’t get close to your direct reports. You can’t make hard decisions if you have an emotional attachment to your people.” Yet rival organizations will come after your best people—so knowing and caring for them is a competitive edge.

Too often, talented people report that an executive recruiter knows and cares more about their hopes and dreams than their manager does. Don’t let this be said about you. One-on-one meetings create genuine relationships and job satisfaction. They are almost like an insurance policy for effective leadership.

Performance Review

I don’t really believe in traditional annual performance reviews. I think of a performance review as an ongoing process that happens throughout the year. If you’ve been providing feedback on a consistent basis and having regular one-on-one meetings all year, there are no surprises at performance review time. Your team members have stayed focused on their goals and know what a good job looks like because their manager has connected with them through day-to-day coaching and one-on-one meetings to ensure they get an A. Now that’s the kind of performance review I’d like to see more often!

Life Is All About Getting A’s

You may or may not know that I spent 10 years as a college professor. I was always in trouble with the faculty. What drove them crazy more than anything was how, at the beginning of every course, I gave my students a copy of their final exam.

When the faculty first found out about it, they came to me and said, “What are you doing? You can’t give students the final exam ahead of time!”

“I won’t only give them the final exam ahead of time,” I replied. “What do you think I’ll do throughout the semester? I’ll teach them the answers so that when they get to the final exam, they’ll get A’s. Because life is all about getting A’s.”

I tell you this little story because I think it’s a great metaphor for an effective performance management system. Here’s why:

•  Giving out the final exam at the beginning of the year is like setting clear goals during performance planning: it lets people know exactly what’s expected of them.

•  Teaching people the answers is what day-to-day coaching is all about. Check in with each person on a regular basis. If you see or hear about someone doing something right, don’t wait a year to congratulate them during their performance review—give them a praising on the spot. If they do something wrong, don’t save your feedback for their review—redirect them right away to give them a chance to get back on track toward their goal.

•  Finally, when people get the final exam again at the end of the year—in the form of a performance review—they will get an A: a great evaluation!

Get Out of Their Way

Once you have collaborated with your people on goals and given them the direction and support they need to master their job, you have to let them run with the ball. You knew they had brains when you hired them—it’s time to let them use them! A well-trained person doesn’t need micromanaging; they need autonomy to grow and thrive.

Even though it’s appropriate to provide a hands-on, directing leadership style when someone is learning a new task or skill, the goal is always to move to a hands-off delegating style. This means trusting your team to act independently and turning over responsibility to them for day-to-day decision making and problem solving. In other words, it means getting out of their way!

But don’t disappear completely. The highest achievers still need a leader who praises them, celebrates their wins, and provides new challenges to keep them engaged. So, continue having regular one-on-one meetings, no matter how long someone has been with you or how well they do their job.

I’ll close with a quote from Margie Blanchard—my wonderful wife for 60 years. Someone once asked her, “What do you think leadership is all about?”

“Leadership is not about love—it is love,” Margie responded. “It is loving your mission, it’s loving your people, it’s loving your customers, and it’s loving yourself enough to get out of the way so that other people can be magnificent.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. God bless.

About the Author

Ken Blanchard, one of the world’s most influential leadership experts, is co-author of more than 65 books, including The One Minute Manager, with combined sales of more than 23 million copies in 47 languages. Co-founder of the Ken Blanchard Companies, a leadership training and consulting firm in San Diego, California, Ken has received numerous honors for his contributions to the fields of management, leadership, and speaking, including the Thought Leadership Award from ISA, the Association of Learning Providers. When he’s not writing or speaking, Ken teaches in the Master of Science in Executive Leadership program at the University of San Diego. Born in New Jersey and raised in New York, Ken received an MA from Colgate University and a BA and PhD from Cornell University.

Recommended Resources

Blanchard, K., and S. Johnson. 2003. The One Minute Manager. New York: HarperCollins.

Blanchard, K., and S. Johnson. 2015. The New One Minute Manager. New York: HarperCollins.

Blanchard, K., and R. Conley. 2022. Simple Truths of Leadership: 52 Ways to Be a Servant Leader and Build Trust Oakland: Berrett-Koehler.

Blanchard, K., and R. Broadwell. 2018. Servant Leadership in Action: How You Can Achieve Great Relationships and Results. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler.

Blanchard, K. 2018. Leading at a Higher Level: Blanchard on Leadership and Creating High Performing Organizations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press.

Blanchard, K., P. Zigarmi, and D. Zigarmi. 2013. Leadership and the One Minute Manager. New York: Harper Collins.