“As coaches, we must focus our energies on those who put their hands up.”
– Lisa Rubinstein
It’s time to continue our little game of leadership tennis. Here’s the ball I received from Lisa after my earlier return on here serve. Lisa’s key question: ”How do you build the peer and social pressure around people to show them the right behavior?”
Peer and social pressure help to create the right behavior, but I believe you first need to do two other things: you need to be able to distinguish the good guys from the bad ones and optimise the balance in favour of the good ones. If not, your battle is lost before you started.
Here’s how I would create favourable odds:
Be very explicit about the behavior you want and don’t want
It all starts by a clear view on what behavior is expected and what’s not. I see too many organisations that have a fancy competence dictionary, but no simple guidelines on behavior that is allowed or not allowed.
Manage inflow – outflow
Once you have the yardstick, use it. Make sure you hire people who have the behavioural attributes you need. Don’t compromise: it’s much easier to develop someone’s skills than to re-programme underlying behavior.
Also, make a list of individuals who do not show the desired attributes. If one or more perform average of below average, dare to say goodbye. It often only takes two or three ‘unexpected’ departures to send a strong message.
Once the balanced has shifted by a solid hire – fire approach, you can use other levers. A key one for me is the way you deal with individual objective setting. What do you think, Lisa.
