I was preparing for a week of Safety Leadership training with men in the oil industry. I was going to be working with a co-facilitator whom I knew casually but with whom I had never worked.
In preparation for this workshop, I emailed my co-facilitator, Jack. It is customary that we “divy up” the segments in the workshop and designate the primary facilitator at that point. In that email, I suggested the following: “Even when the other is taking the lead, I hope that any of us can add to the conversation when we see a valid point to make. So even if it’s not one of our “turns,” we can speak up. It enables us to “back each other up,” so to speak.” Sound advice, I thought.
Jack responded: “Rob…concerning your comment about adding an important Point…since we are all professionals, I hope these types of interventions will not be necessary…because those interventions can make the days longer than necessary.”
[WHAT? What's up with that comment? To my mind, I was suggesting that we each be open to the other "adding in" so that the client would get the very best of what we both had to offer. To my mind, this was a "no brainer." He seemed to be telling me, in a very diplomatic way, to keep out of his speaking parts. What a clown!]
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Last week we said, “People don’t resist change as much as they resist the way change is implemented.”
Let’s switch gears for a minute. Here’s a truth about human behavior: Our Mind-Set drives our behavior. Therefore, if we are going to change our behavior, we need to change our Mind-Set. So, what does this have to do with change? Most changes, especially the changes that people resist, require a change in behavior.
Now, until someone’s Mind-Set changes, their behavior won’t change easily, if at all. The lack of attention to Mind-Set and the failure to identify Critical Success Factors, explain why people resist some changes. So, this week we’ll look at the process of Mind-Set change.
The process of Mind-Set change is a straight forward three step process:
Let’s look at all 3.
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With one particular employee – let’s call him “Pat” – nothing has finally “worked” to raise performance. You have analyzed the performance system (see here for a series of posts) and made appropriate adjustments. You have coached Pat on more than one occasion about picking up his game. He does well for a week or two, then he’s back to the same behaviors. You don’t want to fire him, and you know that threats don’t work with anyone long-term. What now? How do you have a disciplined, focused conversation that finally gets Pat to own his behaviors and make better choices to which he will (finally) commit?
We introduced Performance Accountability (PA) in a prior post as THE tool for this very situation. To hold a successful PA session, you will need to establish Pat’s performance as the only legitimate topic for discussion, and you will need to present unambiguous performance data to “make your case.” The short answer: you’re going to have to do your homework first!
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