Don't Try This At Home... Yet

Turning good advice into performance improvement takes more than you might think. 

You learn about leadership because you want to get better at leading.  Good advice and ideas about leadership are interesting, but not useful until you put them into action.  The problem is that there is a world of difference between knowing what to do and being able to do it.  So before you try it on the job, ask yourself five questions:

·         What

·         Why

·         Are you able?

·         If yes, then

·         If no, then

What?

Sometimes advice is too general, for example ‘be a good coach’.  To put this into action you need to know exactly what this means.  What are the techniques?  What skills does it take?  How do you know if you are doing it correctly?   To get the answers to these questions you may need to do some research.  Talk with an expert like an HR manager or a trainer; attend a class, read books or on-line resources. If possible, observe someone doing it well.  You need to know what great looks like before you start.

Why? 

What to do is not very helpful without the ‘why’ behind it. Leadership, like real estate, is about location, location, location.  What works is completely dependent on your environment, your work and your people. OK, really about context, not location, but you get the point. A great idea in one context can be a disaster for another. If you don’t understand why you should do something -- the ultimate purpose and the underlying principles -- then you can’t customize to your situation. 

Are you able? 

You need to know whether or not you have the knowledge and skills it takes to execute the new idea and do it well.  Self-assessment (aka guessing) is not the best strategy.  Ask for feedback from people you work with, have someone observe and critique a role play, or check other sources of feedback like 360° or employee opinion surveys.   You will be most successful if you start with an accurate and objective assessment of your current level of ability. 

If yes, then

If you have the skills to implement, then you may be ready to go.  But, consider putting together an implementation plan.  Long lists of good ideas can create analysis paralysis -- you simply can't keep all the advice in your head.  You can break it down into steps and execute one step at a time.  And it helps if you start with easier situations.  You could do your first coaching session with a high performer; save the low performers for when your skills are really top notch.

If no, then

If you don’t have the capability to put the advice into action then you have some work to do -- you need a development plan.    First, break what you want to learn down into smaller parts and work on each individual part separately.  Typical leadership competencies are too big to work on all at once.  For example, "Be a good coach", is too broad and vague.  But it includes two smaller parts: “provide specific, constructive feedback” and “have regular one-on-ones” Either of these may be a good place to start.   You want to work on small parts of performance that are just slightly above your current skill level – too easy and you won’t learn, too hard and you will fail and give up. 

To build skills quickly you need deliberate practice.  Just as there is a distinction between practice and performance in activities like sports and music, you should distinguish between practice and performance in building your leadership skills.  But separating practice and performance doesn't mean that you can't practice as part of your regular job duties.  For example, to be good at giving feedback you need to be able to construct the feedback script according to a specific set of rules.   You may know this as the STAR model – where you describe the Situation, Task, Action, and Result of performance.  You can practice constructing feedback scripts on any behavior you observe -- just don’t actually share the feedback with anyone.   This will build your skills in observing and documenting performance and get you ready for the next step -- sharing the feedback.  When you have practiced all the small parts of a competency, put them together and practice them in scrimmages or low stakes situations.   You can ask a friend to practice with you.

Now, you are ready

It is hard to change a big portion of your behavior in one fell swoop.  I know this seems like heresy but, don’t immediately try to use what you learn.  You will, at best, sub-optimize; or, at worse, fail and give up.  If you put a little thought and time into developing a plan you can double or triple the benefit you get from leadership advice. With today’s pace of change and innovation, we can all benefit from faster and more efficient learning.