No Return on Delegated Work

Some managers delegate work only to later discover the work isn't getting done on time, or the employee is hesitant about what to do, or there are errors, missing pieces or less than satisfactory progress. Some managers then take the assignment back and do it themselves, and often reminding themselves that this is exactly why they don't like to delegate work. What they fail to realize is that taking the work back does not solve the problem. In fact it can make the problem worse as some employee's learn to return delegated work back to the boss, especially delegated work that is difficult and/or delegated work that the employee doesn't like to do.

When delegated work is not being done the way it should, the manager must get involved as a teacher and a coach. Give advice, counsel, additional information and even retraining as needed. Show and tell if required. Pitch in and work alongside of the employee as necessary. But never take back the delegated assignment or the responsibility for getting that assignment done. This approach allows the employee to gain knowledge and experience so that they are in a better position to do the delegated work in the future. And employees also learn to ask questions, clarify instructions, and seek help sooner because they know that wasted time and effort will place more burden on them.

Also note that this approach can work well for normal assignments as well. If an employee encounters an exception to a routine job, avoid taking the exception away and handling it yourself. By helping you handle the exception, the employee will learn from the experience. And that will put them in a better position to deal with (or at least help with) similar situations in the future).

About Pelleyblog. This blog covers topics of interest to managers, particularly those at the first-line supervisor level. Topics include handling difficult employees, leadership, counseling, coaching, delegation, making work assignment, professionalism and time management. We welcome your comments on this post.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

Include Your Employees in Decisions

Within a set of guidelines or boundaries, most companies empower employees to make certain operating decisions on their own. Decisions beyond those boundaries are typically referred to the manager who then makes a decision (up to her or his authorization level of course).

Most managers are good at making these decisions at their level of authority. What many managers fail to do however is to involve their direct reports in the decision making process or to even tell their direct reports the reason or justification for their decision.

By leaving direct reports out of the process the manager fails to educate them and leaves them to speculate, guess or surmise why some decisions tend to go one way and other decisions tend to go another. The employee may guess correctly, or not, but in any case they don't know for certain the business policies and philosophies that underlie their manager's decision.

By explaining the higher level decision-making process, the manager expands the employee's knowledge of the factors involved in making those decisions. This positions the employee to have their own decision-making boundaries expanded in the future, as the manager confidently delegates additional decision-making to an employee who knows full well what the correct decision is and, more importantly, why.

About Pelleyblog. This blog covers topics of interest to managers, particularly those at the first-line supervisor level. Topics include handling difficult employees, leadership, counseling, coaching, problem solving, lean thinking, motivation and time management. We welcome your comments on this post.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

The Missing Piece

I just finished reading a homework assignment focused on an employee whose lifestyle balance between home and work is skewed toward home. "It seems she is so happy to leave work to go home that she rushes through her work and takes no joy in doing her job." While the actual work effort is adequate, this employee has little actual interest in her work and has less than adequate working relationships with her co-workers.

In addressing the issues, the supervisor had a very comprehensive plan for coaching, counseling and corrective actions. It would begin with the supervisor reciting her impressions and concerns, moving from there to a statement of impact of the negative behaviors, and from there moving to specific corrective action steps. All in all, a very good job by the supervisor, but it lacked one important piece.

The supervisor needs to know how the employee sees things. What is the employee's perspective on her job? What does she like? Doesn't like? What is the employee's perception of her co-workers? Department goals, standards and requirements? What are the employee's interests? What are her concerns? What is her motivation for working? What would make her work more interesting to her? And so forth.

Without these pieces of information, the supervisor's plan may well fail to address issues that are key to the employee.

About me: Dan Pelley is an educator specializing in management training and development programs for supervisors and other first-line managers in Connecticut (CT), Massachusetts (MA) and Rhode Island (RI). The issue recited above came from a participant in one of his supervisory management development programs.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

Unhappy at Home

Sometimes an employee's personal life follows them to work, creating a negative influence on job performance. While these outside factors have many different forms which lead to a wide variety of on-the-job issues, today's post deals with an employee who is unhappy at home. Essentially, at this point in her life, the employee's home life is just not what she hoped it would be, and her unhappiness causes her to come to work feeling blue and depressed. Because of this she tends to keep to herself, it severely limits her interaction with co-workers and it diminishes her ability to take an active role in the department team. On the other hand, her boss believes that if she could just leave the outside influences at home, she could be a great team player.

I liked her boss's comment. But how to do it? Since the influences come from the home life, the boss probably can't do much about eliminating them. Except of course to offer empathy, compassion and understanding and to "point her in the right direction" of available help and resources should she seek the boss's advice and counsel.

What the boss can do, with a reasonable possibility of success, is to make the employee's work experience so interesting to her that it motivates her to want to "put her all" into her job, which in turn will help her forget her outside troubles, at least while she's at work. In essence the boss should work toward giving her a sense of social interaction (becoming a member of the team), a feeling of accomplishment (by achieving higher levels of performance), an enhanced ego state (through increased self-esteem and the camaraderie and appreciation of other team members) and a sense of self-fulfillment (by developing new skills and exercising new talents).

Is it easy to do? Not necessarily. But it shouldn't be overly hard either. The boss recognizes her potential. He realizes the source of the trouble and the impact on the department. The department is team-based. What the boss needs to do now is to take the time to guide and coach her in a direction that will combine her interests with those of the team and move her toward becoming an integral and interested member of the department team. And the boss also needs to get some of the stronger team members to extend a hand in helping her become a better team player.

About Pelleyblog. This blog covers topics of interest to managers, particularly those at the first-line supervisor level. Occasionally we include topics of general interest, topics about Dan Pelley's background and experiences, and a rare occasional rant. We welcome your comments on this or any other post.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

The Next 10 Days

Most of my homework assignments contain a key question focused on making something better. For example. an assignment in my "Participative Management (Building High Performance Teams)" program looks at a weaker team player and asks what the manager will do going forward (as a coach and mentor) to strengthen the weaker team player.

All too often the answer involves generalities such as "I can give him feedback on his performance;" "I can talk with her about her negative attitude;" "I can give him some new assignments;" "I can let her try managing a special project;" "I can encourage him to share his ideas;" "I can delegate some responsibilities to her;" and so forth.

My feedback on these generalized answers is usually along these lines: "Good start. But you lack specifics. What can you specifically do in the next 10 business days to move forward in your coaching efforts with her/him?"

When an employee has performance issues and requires coaching from you, the overviews and the generalities give you a sense of direction and focus. But in and of themselves they don't create specific actions that you can commit to, plan for and implement to get the situation off the dime and moving forward.

About me: For 25 years, Dan Pelley has presented supervisory management development programs in Rhode Island (RI), Massachusetts (MA) and Connecticut (CT). He is the 2004 recipient of the Richard Fontaine Award for Teaching Excellence awarded by Quinebaug Valley Community College in Danielson, CT.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

Increasing Confidence and Self-Esteem

The process of helping employees develop confidence and gain self-esteem is approached in the much the same way you would develop it in a child. Start small (baby steps), provide lots of encouragement (nurturing), help them recover from any errors by treating errors as learning experiences (pick up and dust off after they fall down), back away slowly (start letting go) and encourage them to work toward independence (let them do things on their own).



About Pelleyblog. This blog covers topics of interest to managers, both new managers seeking to learn new skills and more experienced managers seeking to update their skills. We also encourage everyone to participate in the blog by commenting on any post, or by submitting your own article for posting. If you would like to know more about submitting articles or topics for consideration, click here to send me an e-mail.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

Analyzing Performance Problems

Yesterday's post presented a key question to consider when you have an employee performance problem. Are you facing an issue of skill and thus need to coach and train, or are you facing a question of will and thus need to counsel and discipline? You may want to read that post first.

I was first introduced to the skill versus will question in a wonderful book, "Analyzing Performance Problems," first edition, by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe. The book was a gift from Bill Ahearn, former Director of Human Resources for Newport Creamery Restaurants. Bill had originally purchased a copy for himself and was so impressed by the merits of the book that he purchased several additional copies to give to others including myself.

This is one of the finest management books I have ever read. I began recommending it as soon as I finished reading it for the first time, over 2o years ago. The current version of the book is the third edition which I purchased when it was issued in 1997. It continues to be a wonderful resource for managers who must deal with employee performance problems. Even better, unlike so many other management books, it's easy to read. And you can read it conventionally, chapter by chapter, beginning to end, and gain a tremendous amount of information.

But you can also use the book dynamically as it is organized as a decision tree. Indeed the third edition includes a copy of the complete decision tree as a fold-out in the back of the book. You use the book dynamically by having a particular situation involving an individual employee in mind. As you come to each question (decision point) in the book you answer the question based on the situation you have in mind. Then you jump to the topic in the book indicated by your answer to the question. In a dynamic fashion you are skipping over information not applicable to your current situation, and instead follow a path reflecting the current situation. You end up with a tightly focused concise set of information that recommends how to deal very specifically with the particular problem for the individual employee who has the performance problem.

Over the years I've always wanted to add a bookstore to my website at danpelley.com. The carrying cost of inventory and other logistical issues have prevented me from doing that. But I have added a recommended reading list to this blog and currently present the four management books that I favor most as valuable resources. "Analyzing Performance Problems" is of course one of these books. You'll find the recommended reading list in the right-hand column of the blog just above "The Icon Me" on the green bar. If you'd like to purchase the book from Amazon, you can click on the title in the recommended reading list and go directly to that book's listing at Amazon.

If you choose to purchase the book from Amazon or another bookstore or even decide to check it out at the library, I'd be interested in knowing your thoughts on the book.

About me: Dan Pelley offers a series of five programs leading to a Certificate in Supervisory Management. The five programs are "Managing People,: "Leadership Skills," "Managing For Results," "Proactive Leadership," and "Participative Management." 137 companies in Connecticut (CT), Rhode Island (RI), Massachusetts (MA) and New York have one or more people who earned this certificate.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.

Issues: Managing Expectations

The issue: A very bright but distracted employee. Indeed, he is so absent-minded that the manager questions whether the behavior is authentic. The manager also views him as the least productive and most unfocused team member; he doesn't take his job very seriously and socializes excessively. As a result, the manager is considering lowering his expectations of the employee. The manager tells me he thinks he set those expectations too high when he first took over the department because, at that time, this person was his most senior team member. At this point the manager also believes he may have to reestablish some trust on both sides. The manager sought my advice.

Dan's advice: Before lowering expectations, create an environment for him to grow into your expectations. Find out how he views things. What he likes, and doesn't like, about his job. What are his expectations? How well are his expectations being met on the job? In essence, begin by getting a handle on how he views his job and his role in the department. After that you can then try to make him a partner in creating a set of expectations that will benefit the both of you. Expectations that will improve the work environment for him, while also improving his performance and contribution to the department.

If you can both agree on a clear set of performance expectations that are appropriate and realistic, then you can begin to coach and mentor him on what he needs to know and do to meet those expectations.

Also realize that the foundation of trust is mutual respect. The framework for trust is a set of mutual expectations. The process of gaining trust involves maintaining respect while managing expectations and teaching people how to meet those expectations.

About me: Dan Pelley is an educator specializing in management training and development programs for supervisors and other first-line managers in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The issue recited above came from a participant in one of his supervisory management development programs.

Copyright © 2009 Daniel W. Pelley
All rights reserved.