Substitute for Courage?

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 by Martha Forlines

As a leader do you have courage to:

 

-terminate a poor performer,

-reward high performers,

-give honest feedback,

-hold people accountable,

-agree to disagree,

-do the right thing, and

-much more,

 

If a leader doesn’t have courage here are some surefire substitutes we hear:

 

-“I don’t have time”

-“It’s not important anyway”

-“I’m not good at that”

-“I hate doing it”

-“Nobody really cares”

-“It can wait”

 

Just tell yourself the right thing—the need for courage disappears and leaves you with a clear conscience.

 

Of course, there’s always a price to pay for the things we say to ourselves.

 

Martha Forlines and Thad Green

Tags: confidence, employee engagement, employee motivation, employee performance, leadership coaching, leadership consulting, leadership training, performance
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The common thread of poor performers

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 by Martha Forlines

We received a call recently from a manager dealing with a supervisor that was going “native”.  The supervisor failed to respond when a member of her team performed poorly. 

 

The first problem was that the manager had to bring the employee performance issues to the attention of the supervisor.  Here’s where the supervisor went native…she begrudgingly counseled the employee and said, “My manager, Ms. XXXX said I had to talk to you about how you are treating our customers.”

 

Hmmm…so there is no self accountability and there’s no accountability for the performance of her own employee.  Read more below about this tangled web…

  

1. This thread weaves a tangled mess.
2. Every poor performer has one thing in common—someone is letting them get by with it.
3. You can teach a person HOW TO deal with poor performers, but you can’t teach people TO deal with them.
4. The missing ingredient is COURAGE, which is hard to find, at least in most leadership training, leadership consulting, and executive coaching.
5. And so . . . on and on poor performers go…unless you have the courage of accountability and follow through!

 

 Martha Forlines and Thad Green

Tags: confidence, courage, employee engagement, executive coaching, fear of failing, leadership, leadership consulting, leadership secrets, leadership success, leadership training, trust, workplace conflict
Posted in Employee Performance | No Comments »