Michael is a sales manager in a high tech company. He is very task focused and finds it difficult to simultaneously drive goals and attend to relationships. During a 360 interview one of his direct reports provides the following feedback. “Michael takes the wind right out of my sails. When he called the other day, I was telling him about progress my guys were making on a tough account. I was really psyched. I don’t get how he didn’t hear that. Maybe he did. Anyhow, he cut me off with, ‘That’s good,’ and didn’t even take a breath before letting me know he was upset with me because he hadn’t yet received data he needed for a report. He really burst my bubble. When the call was over I just shut my laptop and was pretty much done for the day.”
Frustrated that his sales team is not achieving their goals, Michael asks for help assessing the situation and agrees to work with a coach. After reviewing 360 feedback they determine that his relationships with his direct reports is at the heart of the problem. Together they examine Michael’s current approach and the assumptions on which it is founded. Michael believes that people will and should follow a leader based on the quality of his ideas and their confidence in his strategies. Furthermore he thinks people’s feelings about a manager should not play a role in their performance. As a result of these beliefs Michael focuses on communicating strategies and goals, managing execution and measuring results while paying little attention to the quality of his relationships. He assumes that people understand what is important to him and should deliver accordingly. When this does not happen, he becomes annoyed and delivers pointed feedback in an impatient and critical tone.
Michael agrees to consider a different set of behaviors based on the assumption that the quality of the relationship between leader and followers contributes to motivation and performance. He also agrees to a period of experimentation with related behaviors that include empathic listening, reflecting his understanding of what is important to his team members, and being more supportive.
Michael’s first assignment using this approach is to share the themes of his 360 feedback with each of his direct reports and to ask them for examples of interactions that had a negative effect on them. Under these very challenging conditions Michael remains non-defensive and listens with empathy to people’s stories. He is surprised to hear how he made people feel and offers sincere apologies. He also commits to change and asks for help and patience while working to developing better relationships with his team members. People’s feelings about and responses to Michael begin to change immediately.
The experiment proves successful and Michael permanently adapts the new behaviors and beliefs. The employee quoted above speaks differently of Michael now. “I don’t avoid him anymore. I call him, let him know what’s going on and ask for his input and advice.”
Things look a lot different from Michael’s perspective as well. “Now that people know I care, they are asking, ‘What can I do for you, for the company?’ There is buy in to the message that comes from me as a leader. Critical things are getting done with much less push from me and more pull from them.” Michael’s region has been exceeding their sales goals every quarter for the past year and they are the first U.S. region in the company to achieve greater than 50% market share.