Cindy Stynchula's Blog

To continue from Leaders Balance Their Focus on Results AND Progress….

So how did so many of us who are leaders develop this tendency for a singular focus on results?  I think it comes from a couple of sources:

1. American business usually promotes, pays and incents employees on results – whether the results are organizational or individual.
2. Americans tend to assess someone as a natural leader if s/he takes charge and makes things happen – quickly.  (For those familiar with Inscape Publishing’s DiSC Behavioral Assessment, this is the ‘D’ Dominance style.)
3. Americans have bought into the theory that to succeed in business, we have to lead at the speed of change – which is increasing exponentially.  ( see YouTube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q75KhAeqJg)

I think one of my? our? greatest challenges as leaders is to be aware of these influences and to remain grounded and balanced – particularly as it relates to how we accomplish results through others.

For me, it is about creating a balance by rewarding results AND recognizing progress.

Rewarding Results

I propose that if we do anything, it is reward results.  Most companies promote, pay and incent based on results.  Some businesses do a better job of this than others.  From my perspective, the best programs are those that reward based on a balance of organizational, team and individual results. 

Let’s focus on what we probably have less experience with – and that is recognizing progress.

Recognizing Progress

During my last job as an employee in Banking, I worked with an exceptionally a creative and progressive Human Resource Director named Jim Aleman.  He opened my eyes to new ways of leading. 

One of the concepts he implemented was a performance assessment that evaluated an individual’s job competency and job objectives on two perspectives:  progress toward the ideal (effort) and results delivered.  Think about the power of this approach.  Even if an employee wasn’t fully competent in their current role, they could be recognized for how far they had developed during the evaluation period…. And we as leaders began to adopt a balanced focus on progress and results when we coached our employees.  The net result was happier, who felt more appreciated and treated more fairly.   

During my 14 years as an independent consultant, I have not seen any organization with processes and tools in place that recognize progress and effort like my last employer did.

Whether we have a tool like this or not, as leaders we still have the opportunity to promote individual and organizational greatness by recognizing progress as well as rewarding results.

In practical terms, this might mean we:

• Thank someone who is overtly supporting and embracing change.  If there is intense resistance to the change and/or the change is unpopular I would make this type of recognition a visible part of my change management strategy.
• Publicly acknowledge those who try something different – whether the attempt resulted in success or near success.  (Have the person talk about what worked, what didn’t and what s/he might do differently the next time in a public forum so that everyone learns from it and sees that calculated risk taking is valued.)
• Offer one-on-one and specific recognition to people who change their behavior in response to a coaching session, customer complaint or conflict.
• Embrace project delays and obstacles as learning opportunities.  Celebrate the progress that has been made.  Discuss and plan how to avoid similar obstacles in the future.  Discuss ways the project plan can be altered to make up the lost time or to recalculate timelines.
• Drop an email or a handwritten note of encouragement to an employee who is making progress on a project.
• Remember the thermometer poster we used to track our progress toward a goal?  For me it is the United Way Campaign thermometer.  The ‘mercury levels’ of the thermometer were calibrated to reflect totals of donations received, with the top measure being the contribution goal.  Each day or so, someone would take a red marker and color in thermometer so that at a glance we could all so how much further we had to go to reach our goal.  What visuals do you have in the workplace that track progress toward your goals?  I challenge you to start doing so… and don’t track more than three at a time.  Just like anything, if we track too many things nothing gets recognized.

 

And just as a reminder, here are the three elements of good recognition: 

 

1. It is specific
2. It is sincere
3. It is immediate

 I am sure there are at least 100 more ways we can recognize progress.   Post your experiences.

 What are the best ways you have found to recognize progress?

 How did your employees respond as you started to recognize progress?  What benefits did you reap?

 What behavior changes do you as the leader have to make to balance rewarding results and recognizing progress?