Senior leaders rely on your front-line and mid-level managers to institute accountability, but most front-line and mid-level managers feel like they’re trying to solve a mystery when it comes to building an accountable department. So, let’s break down the mystery.
Many leaders avoid conversations about performance or behavior altogether. The reasons range from lack of skills, fear of the emotions that might arise, or the belief that their decisions won’t be backed by their senior-level manager. If employees don’t know what they’re doing wrong, they can’t improve. So, initiating difficult conversations is a big piece of the puzzle.
But when these leaders finally initiate a successful conversation that they’ve been avoiding, they feel elated! The tension of avoidance has dissipated and is replaced by a natural high that always comes from taking one act of courage.
Unfortunately, it’s common for the leader to be surprised a few weeks later when old patterns of poor performance, missed deadlines, or dysfunctional behaviors creep back in!
I’ve heard both new and seasoned leaders say, “I had the conversation, and they improved for a while, but now they’re back to old habits!”
What happened?
The leader didn’t know how to follow through with accountability.
Let’s first look at the phases so that you can troubleshoot when this happens to your leader.
Phase 1: The leader avoids a conversation for various reasons. Tension builds up between the leader, the team, and the employee until the leader must take action.
Phase 2: The leader finally summons the courage to initiate a conversation, and to their surprise, it goes well. The leader is confident, and there’s a glow—a feeling of well-being.
Phase 3: Things go well for a couple of weeks, then old patterns resurface.
Phase 4: The leader loses confidence and feels resentment.
Now the leader has to figure out whether to prepare a warning, document the problem, discipline, or initiate yet another conversation. These phases can ruin leadership confidence!
Where did the mistake happen? In Phase 2. The leader felt so good and so positive after the conversation that they failed to set up a second meeting for accountability—to review the progress.
When coaching front-line and middle-level leaders, make sure they connect the dots between the actual conversation and the follow-up conversation.
Here’s how it goes.
Right after the conversation, schedule a two-week follow-up meeting to see how things are progressing.
Before concluding the meeting, plug in a follow-up meeting on the calendar and send a calendar invitation to the employee.
At the follow-up meeting, the leader explains how they are going to measure progress and what kind of coaching might be required.
Knowing there’s a follow-up ensures that if things fall through the cracks, the leader can easily course-correct the problem, versus letting a problem go on for months. In addition, pre-scheduling the meeting prevents you from having to ask for another conversation if things get off track.
We teach the specifics of this method in The Performance Coaching Model. But let me say something even more important. I recently had a director reach out to me to say this: “I bought the Performance Coaching Model to have better conversations with my subordinates, but it has helped me even more to address issues with peers and my senior VP’s.
