“You can expect more if you inspect more.” – Ken Blanchard
Ken Blanchard describes one-on-one leadership as a partnership that involves mutual trust between two people who work together to achieve common goals. Both leader and follower influence each other.
Leadership shifts between them, depending on the task at hand and who has the competence and commitment to deal with it. Both parties play a role in determining how things get done.
Doesn’t that sound like a great place to work?
In this article, we’ll outline Blanchard’s system to make this type of workplace possible. The system is commonly referred to as a performance management system. It consists of three parts – Performance Planning, Performance Coaching and Performance Reviews.
Performance Planning: Once the organization is clear on its purpose, vision and core values, the basis for performance planning is in place. During planning the leaders and their direct reports agree on the goals and objectives they plan to achieve.
It is most effective to plan for the year and each quarter, then break down the quarterly objectives into manageable key results. The OKR system made famous by Google is a great way to do this. Performance planning is where we define the wins – as individuals and teams. The four steps of Performance Planning are:
– Goal Setting: Great leaders chose the right goal and clearly define the win for the individual and the organization.
– Diagnosis: This is where the leader determines the direct report’s competence (ability to do it) and commitment (engagement) for this task.
– Matching: This step ensures the leader uses the right leadership style based on the direct report’s competence and commitment. When both parties agree to the style of leadership required (directing, coaching, supporting or delegating) projects go a lot smoother.
– Delivering: In this step the leadership style is adjusted based on how the project is going. At each checkpoint (scheduled meeting), the leader and the direct report access the appropriateness of the leadership style. Is it right based on what you know now or are adjustments needed?
Performance Coaching: This is where the organizational pyramid gets turned upside down. Now the leader’s job is to help their direct reports achieve their goals. The leaders work for their people, praising progress and redirecting when they get off track.
Performance Review: This is what most of us are used to in the work world. The once-a-year sit-down where our leaders tell us how we did for the last 12 months.
Unfortunately, most organizations put most of their time and effort into the performance review and little into the planning and coaching.
Without a good plan, your people don’t have a map to work from. They don’t know how to succeed. Without coaching, your people can lose heart and become disengaged. They can also get way off track and have no idea how lost they are.
Everyone loves to win. Winning is fun. If we’ll put more of our efforts into planning and coaching, our people will experience more wins – and so will the organization.
We love helping leaders build great companies and we’ve got some great free resources for you in our resource library. You can check them out at www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at (229) 244-1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.
Curt Fowler is president of Fowler & Company and director at Fowler, Holley, Rambo & Stalvey.
Curt and the team at FHRS help leaders build great companies through Fractional CFO, strategy, tax and accounting services.
Curt is a syndicated business writer, keynote speaker, and business advisor. He has an MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship from the Kellogg School, is a CPA and a pretty good guy as defined by his wife and five children. (Welcome Baby Owen – June 2021!)
