Leadership Mentality

Leaders must demonstrate the following qualities in order to counsel effectively.

• Respect for employees - This includes the belief that individuals are responsible for their own actions and ideas. It includes an awareness of a person's individuality by recognizing their unique values, attributes, and skills. As you attempt to develop people with counseling, you must refrain from projecting your own values onto them.
• Self-Awareness - This quality is an understanding of yourself as a leader. The more you are aware of your own values, needs, and biases, the less likely you will be to project your feelings onto your employees.
• Credibility - Believability is achieved through both honesty and consistency between both the leader's statements and actions. Credible leaders are straightforward with their subordinates and behave in such a manner that earns the subordinates' respect and trust.
• Empathy - or compassion entails understanding a subordinate's situation. Empathetic leaders will be better able to help subordinates identify the situation and then develop a plan to improve it.

The reason for counseling is to help employees develop in order to achieve organizational goals. Sometimes, the counseling is directed by policy, and at other times, leaders should choose to counsel to develop employees. Regardless of the nature of the counseling, leaders should demonstrate the qualities of an effective counselor (respect, self-awareness, credibility, and empathy) and employ the skills of good communication.

While the reason for counseling is to develop subordinates, leaders often categorize counseling based on the topic of the session. Major categories include performance counseling, problem counseling, and individual growth counseling (development). While these categories help leaders to organize and focus counseling sessions, they must not be viewed as separate and distinct types of counseling. For example a counseling session which mainly focuses on resolving a problem may also have a great impact on improving job performance. Another example is a counseling session that focuses on performance may also include a discussion of opportunities for growth. Regardless of the topic of the counseling session, you should follow the same basic format to prepare for and conduct counseling.

Steps for counseling

1. Identify the problem. Ensure you get to the heart of the problem. Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota, invented a technique called the Five Whys. When confronted with a problem you ask "why" five times. By the time the fifth why is answered, you should be at the root cause of the problem. For example:
   Tom's work has not up to standards
   • Why? - After discussing it with Tom it turns out he has too much of a workload
   • Why? - Tom is considered one of the experts, hence he often gets extra work dumped on him
   • Why? - Susan, the other expert, was promoted and no one else is capable of replacing her
   • Why? - We failed to train and develop the other team members
   • Why? - We did not see the necessity of cross-training
2. Analyze the forces influencing the behavior. Determine which of these forces you have control over and which of the forces the worker has control over. Determine if the force has to be modified, eliminated, or enforced.
3. Plan, coordinate, and organize the session. Determine the best time to conduct the session so that you will not be interrupted or forced to end too early.
4. Conduct the session using sincerity, compassion, and kindness. This does not mean you cannot be firm or in control. Your reputation is on the line; the problem must be solved so that your department can continue with its mission. Likewise, you must hear the person out.
5. During the session, determine what the worker believes causes the counterproductive behavior and what will be required to change it. Also, determine if your initial analysis is correct.
6. Try to maintain a sense of timing of when to use directive or nondirective counseling (see below).
7. Using all the facts, make a decision and/or a plan of action to correct the problem. If more counseling is needed, make a firm time and date for the next session.
8. After the session and throughout a sufficient time period, evaluate the worker's progress to ensure the problem has indeed been solved.

There are two types of counseling - directive and nondirective. In directive counseling, the counselor identifies the problem and tells the counselee what to do about it. Nondirective counseling means the counselee identifies the problem and determines the solution with the help of the counselor. The counselor has to determine which of the two, or some appropriate combination, to give for each situation. For example, "Put that cigarette out now as this is a nonsmoking area," is a form of directive counseling. While a form of nondirective counseling would be, "So the reason you are not effective is that you were up late last night. What are you going to do to ensure that this does not affect your performance again?"

Hints for counseling sessions:

• Let the person know that the behavior is undesirable, not the person.
• Let the person know that you care about him or her as a person, but that you expect more from them.
• Do not punish employees who are unable to perform a task. Punish those who are able to perform the task but are unwilling or unmotivated to succeed.
• Counseling sessions should be conducted in private immediately after the undesirable behavior. Do not humiliate a person in front of others.
• Ensure that the employee understands exactly what behavior led to the counseling or punishment.
• Do not hold a grudge. When it is over, it is over! Move on!

Performance Appraisals

Skills + Knowledge + Attitudes = Observable Behavior
Observable Behavior = Performance Appraisal Rating

If you don't keep score, you're only practicing." - Vince Lombardi

Performance Appraisals (often called reviews, evaluations, or assessments) are the measurement of a specific range of skills, knowledge, and attitudes in relation to certain objective standards. The ratings are based upon observations or empirical data in relationship to a set of predefined standards. Although we sometimes make decisions based upon our own personal feelings or gut-level instincts, appraisals must be based upon how well a person has performed to a set standard.

He who stops being better stops being good. - Oliver Cromwell

The objective of performance appraisals is to help employees improve their performance and grow as individuals so that the organization can meet its present and future goals in a timely and cost effective manner. Is this how most organizations use them? No. They are used for protection against lawsuits, to justify different levels of pay increases, or to provide once-a-year feedback. In other words, a lot of managers and supervisors view them as an additional burden required by Human Resources. When in fact, they should be viewed as a performance tool. Just as a leader uses speaking skills to encourage the troops and analytical skills to forecast budgets; performance appraisals should be used to encourage great performance and create goals to improve weak competencies.

For many, the performance appraisal is tied in to their pay as a reward system. Tony Hope, a visiting professor at the French Business school INSEAD, spoke of rewards at the Institute of Personnel and Development's Compensation conference. He believes that we need to stop this practice as trust and commitment cannot be fostered while cost-control imperatives dominate organizational thinking. "Just as we have seen that knowledge workers don't respond to a regime of command and control in management style, so they won't perform according to pay systems that are individually based," says Professor Hope, "Organizations must hang on to their best people and these people are exactly those that are least impressed by internal competition within tight budgets...New and powerful forces that are shaping organizations mean that people management professionals are going to have to find ways of collectively rewarding effort. It will be less pay for performance and more pay for participation."

Performance appraisals are normally given at annual or semi-annual time periods. They need to provide specific feedback to the individual as to what competencies need improvement:

• Skills - What areas do I need to train in?
• Knowledge - What areas do I need to learn more about?
• Attitude - Are my inner drives coinciding with the organization's goals?
• Rewards - What am I doing right so I can do more of it? (we all like pats on the back)

Source : www.skagitwatershed.org