Workplace Challenges
Quiet leaders ... don't tell people what to doOne of the employees you manage comes to you with a problem. Do you provide the solution, no questions asked, or do you give him ownership of the problem and let him solve it on his own? Your answer could help determine if you've got the makings of a "quiet leader." LINDA WHITE |
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 [ 2006-08-16 ] |
David Rock is CEO of Results Coaching Systems. An adjunct lecturer at New York University's Center for Management, he co-created a series of certificate programs in coaching.
In today's workplace -- where employees are better educated than any previous generation -- command-and-control leadership is no longer effective, maintains David Rock, CEO of Results Coaching Systems and author of Quiet Leadership: Six Steps to Transforming Performance at Work.
Quiet leaders, on the other hand, are masters at bringing out the best performance in their staff, he says. In his book, he offers a six-step guide to a new way of having conversations, based on how the brain works and his experience in coaching.
"There is an increasing gap between the way employees are being managed at work and the way they want to be managed," Rock says. "Countless surveys have been done in this area, ending in headlines like, 'Six out of 10 workers are miserable' and '74% of staff not engaged at work.'"
Rock believes leaders can turn that around. How? By bringing out the best performance in others by improving the way their brains process information. Here are his six steps for transforming performance at work:
1. Thinking About Thinking: Instead of telling people what to do, let them think it out for themselves. This will keep them focused on solutions and make them feel more useful.
2. Listen For Potential: By choosing to listen to people as successful, competent and able to resolve their own dilemmas, they will solve their own problems and get on with the job.
3. Listen With Intent: Be succinct, specific and sensitive to how you come across. Understanding exactly what is being said allows the listener to quickly grasp the situation and move on to a solution.
4. Dance Toward Insight: Ask for permission to discuss an issue before launching into conversation. Ask powerful questions and stay out of the details.
Helping people develop a deeper awareness of their dilemma encourages those "aha" moments to come through.
5. Create New Thinking: Once someone has the "aha" needed to make a project a priority, the next conversation should be about how to achieve that, followed by how to ensure it happens.
6. Follow Up: Now that the quiet leader has helped to create new thinking, the focus must be on deepening this new way of thinking to make it useful.
You may face some resistance initially, but once you require your staff to do the thinking, it will become a habit, Rock says. Throughout his book, he provides exercises designed to help you have more constructive conversations.
Take the fourth step, creating permission to have a conversation, for example. It shows respect for the other person's space and creates trust, but be prepared to schedule a better time to speak, Rock says. "You can barge into a conversation, but you will get a lot of resistance. I see conversations that should take five minutes but take 45 minutes because permission hasn't been established."
When having a conversation, Rock encourages you to ask "thinking questions," such as: "How can I best help you to think about this?" "How close to an answer do you think you are?"
"I didn't invent these questions," he says. "I watched what happened in conversations that worked."
Be solutions-focused, not problem-focused. Instead of asking, "Why didn't you hit your targets?" ask, "What do you need to do next time to hit your targets?"
There are similar challenges between being a good parent and being an effective manager, Rock believes. "It might seem quicker to provide the right answer, but that's not the best way to lead. Just like a parent, if you're just telling them what to do, they'll never understand the difference between right and wrong."
Ultimately, he believes employees appreciate the opportunities a quiet leader presents. "People want to feel like they're being developed. We want to know we're growing," Rock says. "It's in the stretch that we feel the joy of life."
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