One Size Fits All?

One of the most important lessons I've learned over the past several years is the importance of changing our leadership style to match the situation or person we are dealing with. Using a single approach may hit the middle part of your team, but may leaves the top and bottom performers to fend for themselves.

One of the first teams I managed was in the customer support area. There were a variety of people on this team, from very new to a few that had been there for more than 5 years. There were some top performers, and of course a few that did just enough not to get fired. I felt that I had a good grip on how to manage people, so I put in place some practices that I thought would improve performance overall.

First, we had 2 people that seemed to come in just a few minutes late every day, so I got the team together and put in place the actions that would occur when someone came in after their scheduled start time. Then I needed to improve 3 of the lowest performer's numbers, so I reminded them of the metrics we kept and created individual metrics for each person. I outlined a process to review these metrics on a daily basis for everyone. And finally, I changed the flexibility that each team member had with customers when it came to refunds. We had several examples lately where we had given far too much back to a customer that had continually abused a policy. I was sure this was the ticket to success for our team.

The great news was that for those team members that abused the attendance policy, they stopped being late. And the three that need to increase their numbers, they improved as well. And we even eliminated every conce
with our refunds and concessions that we provided to our customers. So why was this the beginning of the end for our team? Because what was happening was not something I could measure, but it had an incredibly negative impact on our team and our customers. So what happened?

I made the mistake of isolating the issues, and then implementing a course of action that not only corrected the behavior of those intended, but changed the good behavior I wanted to keep. By making attendance a global issue, those that always came in early or on time felt I was micro managing, and not recognizing the efforts of most that did come in on time. And by measuring and meeting every day with the top performers, they actually lowered their metrics to an average level. Why? Again, I was micro managing an area that they were doing well in. And I even took away the autonomy the team members had in their roles with the refund issue. I changed positive behavior of 80% of the team because I was conce
ed about the abuse the other 20%. Not what I wanted to do.

Situational leadership teaches us that we need to adjust our leadership approach to the individual or situation. I learned that for the few that would abuse policies or lack the knowledge to make good refund decisions, I need to "Direct" their actions more and teach them how to make better decisions. For the team members with several years experience and doing very well, I needed to "Coach" them at times, and use "Delegation" style of leadership to give them more autonomy in the every day decisions. By taking one approach or "style", I improved some but actually drove some of the best people to either leave the company or lower their performance.

Leadership is a people business. We need to be able to identify what each team member needs, and provide that need to improve their performance. We can no longer use a "one size fits all" approach and expect to build strong teams that last.