INTRODUCTION

• In this episode of the One Minute Manager, an entrepreneur bemoans the fact that she lacks devoted hardworking talent in her organisation. As a result, she complains that she has to do most of the work herself. She seeks advice from the One Minute Manager who suggests she should work ‘smarter not harder’. In this process the entrepreneur learns from the One Minute Manager how to use ‘Different Strokes for Different Folks’ and become a Situational Leader.

A VISIT FROM AN ENTREPRENEUR

• Entrepreneur meets One Minute Manager and she explained that she was having a hard time finding people who were willing to work as hard as she was, she was feeling like a Lone Ranger. And One Minute Manager says that she has to learn to delegate and train her staff. The amount of time and effort you put into work is important. But, people think there is a direct relationship between amount of work and success – the more time you put in, the more successful you will be. And he quoted that: DON’T WORK HARDER WORK SMARTER.

THINKING DIFFERENTLY ABOUT LEADERSHIP

• One Minute Manager explains that usually people think that the organization is like a pyramid with Chairman at the top and the hourly employees at the bottom. In between are several levels of management. But, that is not the right way; there is nothing wrong with it as an organizational model. The trouble comes when people think in a pyramid. When people think in a pyramid the assumption is that everyone works for a person above the on the organizational ladder.

• As a result, managers are thought to be “responsible” for planning, organising, and evaluating everything that happens in the organization while their staff is supposed to be “responsive to the directives of management”. That’s why people like you end up thinking managers do all the work. Pyramid should be upside down so that top managers are at the bottom. When that happens there is a subtle, but powerful, twist in who is responsible and who should be responsive to whom. The staff member has to be responsible and the entrepreneur has to be responsive. She had to roll up her sleeves and help them win. If they win, she wins. She has to follow the quote: DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS.

DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS

• Leadership style is the way you supervise or work with someone. It’s how you behave when you are trying to influence the performance of others. For example, if you think you are empathetic, staff-oriented manager, but your staff think you are a hard-nosed, task-oriented person, whose perception of reality will they use-yours or their own? Obviously, their own! Your perception of how you behave is interesting but it tells you only how you intend to act. Unless it matches the perception of others it is not very helpful. One Minute Manager suggests entrepreneur to meet few of his staff members and gave her a list of members to choose from.

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��LEADERSHIP STYLE: PERCEPTON OF OTHERS�

• She started the meeting with Larry McKenzie and she found that One Minute Manager is very directive with him. And McKenzie’s job was just to implement his ideas. They have frequent meetings where One Minute Manager explains him what he wants him to do. As McKenzie is not experienced with the work yet, One Minute Manager guides him about his job and as he gains experience he will take up more responsibility. Then entrepreneur proceeds towards the next door to Cathy Murrow, director of finance. The One Minute Manager treats her very differently. He never tells her what to do but together they arrive at a direction they want to take. She gets a lot of support, encouragement, and praise from the One Minute Manager. He listens to her and draws her out. He also shares information about the company for better decision-making. She was working in the company for over fifteen years so this was a perfect method of working for her.

• Entrepreneur started to believe that One Minute Manager uses only to styles to deal with his staff members until she met John DaLapa, director of operations. He has to supervise and control each part of the operation. He says One Minute Manager uses both the styles with him for different matters. As far as the technical part of his job is concerned, One Minute Manager leaves it all to DaLapa. But, when it comes to the people part of job, One Minute Manager insists that DaLapa consult him before he implements any new personnel programmes or policies. DaLapa describes One Minute Manager as a situational leader, who he changes his style depending on the person he is working with and on the situation.

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�LEADERSHIP STYLE FLEXIBILITY

• When she headed back towards she realized that Different Strokes for Different Folks is alive and well. One Minute Manager explained her three ways to become a situational leader: flexibility, diagnosis, and contracting. For a long time people thought there were only two leadership styles-autocratic and democratic. In fact, people used to shout at each other from these two extremes, insisting that one style was better than the other. Democratic managers were accused of being too soft and easy, while their autocratic counterparts were often called too tough and domineering. But these managers who restricted themselves to their extreme were only “half a manager”. A whole manager is flexible and is able to use four different leadership styles.

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�THE FOUR BASIC LEADERSHIP STYLES

• Style 1: DIRECTING

The leadership provides specific instructions and closely supervises task accomplishment.

• Style 2: COACHING

The leader continues to direct and closely supervise task accomplishment, but also explains decision, solicits suggestions, and supports progress.

• Style 3: SUPPORTING

The leader facilitates and supports subordinates efforts toward task accomplishment and shares responsibility for decision-making with them.

• Style 4: DELEGATING

The leader turns over responsibility for decision-making and problem-solving to subordinates.

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Three words can be used to define Directive Behaviour: STRUCTURE, CONTROL and SUPERVISE. And for Supportive Behaviour: PRAISE, LISTEN and FACILITATE. When asked by entrepreneur to One Minute Manager that isn’t it unfair to treat people differently? He quoted that: THERE IS NOTHING SO UNEQUAL AS THE EQUAL TREATMENT OF UNEQUALS.

Examples for different styles:

Suppose there was some noise in the outside office that was bothering two people.

• DIRECTING: One would say, “Please go out now and get those people to move their conversation down the hall and when you’ve done that report back to me.”
• SUPPORTING: “There’s noise in the outside office bothering us- what do you think we could do about it?”
• COACHING: It combines both direction and support. One would say, “There’s a lot of noise in the outside office that’s bothering us. I think you should go outside and ask those people to move their conversation down the hall. Do you have any questions or suggestions?” In this style manager end up making the final decision but getting input from others.
• DELEGATING: “That noise outside is bothering us. Would you please take care of it?” It means turning over responsibility for day-to-day decision-making and problem-solving to the person doing the task.

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�NO BEST LEADERSHIP STYLE

• When entrepreneur asked One Minute Manager about which style is the best, he answered that there is no best one out of these styles and explained how each one is useful at its appropriate time giving various examples.
• DIRECTING STYLE is appropriate when decision has to be made quickly and the stakes are high. Directing is also appropriate for inexperienced people who you think have the potential to be self-directive and for someone who has some skills but doesn’t know the company – its priorities, policies, or ways of doing business. When they are first learning a task, most people are enthusiastic beginners. They’re ready for any help you can give them. After all, they want to perform well. But people lose their commitment only after they realise that good performance doesn’t make a difference.

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• That good performance often goes unrecognised. When they do something good, their managers don’t say anything. When they make a mistake, they hear about it right way. Once you’ve lost commitment, providing direction is not enough; you also have to provide support and encouragement. When people begin to work on a task, they often find it harder to master than they thought it was going to be, so they lose interest. Or maybe the drop in commitment comes because they don’t think the rewards are going to be worth all the effort. Or maybe they aren’t getting the direction they need – in fact, they’re continually getting criticised. Or progress is so slow or non-existent that they lose confidence I n their ability to learn to do the task well. When this disillusionment happens, when the initial excitement wears off, the best style is a COACHING STYLE, which is high on direction and support.
• But you also want to listen to their concerns, provide perspective, and praise progress. And you want to involve them in decision-making as much as you can because that’s how you’ll build back their commitment. Getting disillusioned at some point depends on how much praise the manager provides and how available the manager is. So a DIRECTING leadership style is better with enthusiastic beginners whereas COACHING is the right style for disillusioned learners.

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• Experienced people would prefer SUPPORTING STYLE.They like to be listened to and supported. They respond well to a supporting style because even though they’re experienced and competent they sometimes reluctant contributor. When asked to take a project, they have a lot of ideas, but they often want to test their ideas out first. They want to be involved in decision-making. They need recognition, which a supporting style provides and yet it is not a universally good style.
• DELEGATING STYLE is appropriate for people who are peak performers – people who are competent and committed. Therefore they don’t need much direction and they are also able to provide their own support. They often take you on “praising tours” – pointing out all the things they and their staff has done right. Top performers don’t need much supervision or praise as long as they know how well they are doing.

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�THINK BEFORE YOU ACT

• The skill of diagnosing a situation before you act is the key to being a situational leader. Most of the managers aren’t willing to stop for a minute to try to decide what needs to be done before they act. WHEN I SLOW DOWN, I GO FASTER.

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�DIAGNOSING DEVELOPMENT LEVEL

Flexibility is important, but without knowing when to use which leadership style with which people you could get into trouble. One of the factors you have to diagnose before using a particular leadership style is the person’s past performance and in examining performance you need to look at two ingredients that determine a person’s performance or achievement: competence and commitment.

• COMPETENCE is a function of knowledge and skills, which can be gained from education, training, and/or experience. Competence, on the other hand, can be developed with appropriate direction and support. It’s not something you are born with. It’s something that is learned.

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• COMMITMENT is a combination of confidence and motivation. Confidence is a measure of a person’s self-assuredness – a feeling of being able to do a task well without much supervision, whereas motivation is a person’s interest in and enthusiasm for doing a task well.
• Sometimes people lose motivation when they realise it is going to be harder than they thought. Or maybe they feel their efforts aren’t being recognised. At other times, people just get bored – they just decide it isn’t worth it. In fact, four combinations of competence and commitment make up “development level”.

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�THE FOUR DEVELOPMENT LEVELS ARE

EVERYONE HAS A PEAK PERFORMANCE POTENTIAL – YOU JUST NEED TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE COMING FROM AND MEET THEM THERE

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MATCHING LEADERSHIP STYLE TO DEVELOPMENTAL LEVEL

LEADERSHIP STYLES APPROPRIATE FOR THE VARIOUS DEVELOPMENT LEVELS

The entrepreneur examining the relationship between the four development levels and four leadership styles summarised the following:

• Directing (Style 1) is for people who lack competence but are enthusiastic and committed (D1). They need direction and supervision to get them started.
• Coaching (Style 2) is for people who have some competence but lack commitment (D2). They need direction and supervision because they’re still relatively inexperienced. They also need support and praise to build their self-esteem, and involvement in decision-making to restore their commitment.
• Supporting (Style 3) is for people who have competence but lack confidence or motivation (D3). They do not need much direction because of their skills, but support is necessary to bolster their confidence and motivation.
• Delegating (Style 4) is for people who have both competence and commitment (D4). They are able and willing to work on a project by themselves with little supervision or support.

Three secrets of One Minute Management are – One Minute Goal Setting, One Minute Praising, and One Minute Reprimands.

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�DIFFERENT STROKES FOR THE SAME FOLKS

• As a situational leader, not only should you use different strokes for different folks, but in many cases you need to use different strokes for same folks, depending upon the task. When you know you’re doing, you don’t need a boss. If a person isn’t competent to perform a particular task, then someone has to direct, control, and supervise that person’s behaviour and if that person’s commitment is low, you also have to provide support and encouragement.

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�DEVELOPING COMPETENCE AND COMMITMENT

• Particular leadership style which is appropriate with a person at one moment in time, may be inappropriate with the same person later on. Particularly when it comes to the directing and coaching styles, your goal as manager should be to gradually increase the competence and confidence of your people so that you can begin to use less time-consuming styles – supporting, and delegating – and still get high-quality results.
• In determining what style to use with what development level, just remember that leaders need to do what the people they supervise can’t do for themselves at the present moment. Since a D1 has commitment but lacks competence, the leader needs to provide direction (S1-Directing); since a D2 lacks both competence and commitment, the leader needs to provide both direction and support (S2-Coaching); since a D3 has competence but variable commitment, the leader has to provide support (S3-Supporting); and since a D4 has both competence and commitment, the leader does not need to provide either direction or support (S4-Delegating).

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• As development level moves from D1 to D4, the curve shows how a manager’s leadership style moves from S1 (directing) to S4 (delegating), with first an increase in support (S1), then a decrease in direction (S3), until eventually there’s also a decrease in support (S4). At D4 the person is able to direct and support more and more of his or her own work.

Steps to be followed to develop a person’s competence and commitment:

• First step: tell them what to do.
• Second step: show them what to do.
• Third step: let them try.
• Fourth step: observing performance, need to supervise closely and frequently monitor performance. YOU CAN EXPECT MORE OF YOU INSPECT MORE.
• Fifth step: praise progress.

Even in using delegating style some direction and support are provided. But people who are competent and confident to perform at a high level (D4’s) are generally not only able to direct their own behaviour but catch themselves doing things right, too, because they’ve learned how to evaluate their own performance.

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�THE THREE SECRETS OF ONE MINUTE MANAGEMENT MAKE SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP DYNAMIC MODEL

• GOALS start performance in the right direction and permit a manager to analyse a person’s competence and commitment (development level) to perform well.
• PRAISINGS foster improvements in the development level of individuals and permit a manager to change his/her leadership style gradually from more direction (directing) to less direction and more support (coaching and supporting) to less direction and less support (delegating).
• REPRIMANDS stop poor performance and may mean that a manager has to move back gradually from less direction and less support (delegating) to more support (supporting) or more direction (coaching and directing).

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�SHARING WHAT YOU’RE DOING

• ‘SITUATIONAL LEADERSHIP IS NOT SOMETHING YOU DO TO PEOPLE BUT SOMETHING YOU DO WITH PEOPLE’

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�CONTRACTING FOR LEADERSHIP STYLE

There are three parts to performance review:

• Performance Planning
• Day-to-Day Coaching and Counselling, and
• Performance Evaluation

Most of the companies start with performance evaluation and ask the personnel department to develop a form for evaluation. Then, once these companies have their evaluation form in place they usually move to performance planning; that is, they hire or appoint someone from within to help people write goals. Day-to-day coaching and counselling is all about being responsive to the people you supervise. Once your staff are clear about their goals (they have the final exam questions), it’s your job to do everything you can to help them accomplish those goals so that when it comes to performance evaluation they get high marks. The process would start with us as individuals identifying three to five key goals for your operation. Then we’d develop performance standards for the next three to six months in relation to each goal.

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They’d agree on what a good job looks like. We’d also rewrite each goal so it was SMART. The S stands for specific. Goals should state exactly what the person is responsible for. The M stands for measurable, performance is going to be measured and what a good job looks like. The A stands for attainable. The goals have to be reasonable. The R stands for relevant. A goal is relevant if it addresses an activity that makes a difference in overall performance. The T in SMART stands for track able. You need to put a record-keeping system in place to track performance.

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�POSITIVE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT PEOPLE

When managers use a directive leadership style, they probably think their subordinates are lazy, unreliable, and irresponsible, and therefore need close supervision. But if managers use a participative leadership style, they believe their people are responsible and self-motivated. Positive assumptions about people are as given; if you believe people have the potential to become high performers. What fluctuates is the manager’s behaviour, depending on subordinates’ needs for direction and support. ‘EVERYONE IS A POTENTIAL HIGH PERFORMER; SOME PEOPLE JUST NEED A LITTLE HELP ALONG THE WAY’.

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�BECOMING A SITUATIONAL LEADER

• It was up to entrepreneur to develop her staff so she didn’t have to do all the work herself. She had to use what she’d learned and to have it work for her. One Minute Manager quotes a Buddhist saying here: “To know and not to use is not yet to know!”
• …..She became a situational leader not because she thought like one or talked like one but because she behaved like one. She started with clear goals. Then with her staff, she diagnosed their competence and commitment to accomplish each goal without supervision. Then she contracted with each of her members of staff on each of their tasks and together they decided which leadership style was appropriate. Finally, she followed through and provided the leadership style they had agreed to until enough progress was made to warrant a change in leadership style.

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• The entrepreneur was happy and proud that she had learned the essence of good leadership from the One Minute Manager. She would never forget that effective managers have a range of management styles that they can use comfortably. They have developed some flexibility in using those styles in different situations. Effective managers also have a knack for being able to diagnose what their skills and confidence in doing the tasks they are assigned.
• Finally, effective leaders can communicate with their staff – they are able to reach agreements with them not only about their tasks but also about the amount of direction and support they will need to accomplish these tasks.
• These three skills – flexibility, diagnosis, and contracting – are three of the most important skills managers can use to motivate better performance on the part of the people with whom they work. What the entrepreneur had built was an organisation in which people’s contributions were valued. Her responsive style encouraged others to take risks and responsibility until, in time.

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