Does being a compassionate, servant leader mean that we should keep team members who are not performing well?

Using the approach below, we can often help an under-performing team member to improve and grow.

And, when necessary, we can use the approach to compassionately let someone go without having to fire them.

Addressing Poor Performance

I’ve certainly failed with this balance at both ends of the spectrum.

I’ve been too quick to want to let someone go. And, as I’ve grown more compassionate over the years, I’ve not addressed an issue that really needed to be addressed because I didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

But being compassionate doesn’t mean that we don’t address issues that need to be addressed, like consistently poor performance. Sometimes the most compassionate thing we can do, which would be in the best service of all the stakeholders, is to let someone go.

Are we really serving someone if we allow him or her to consistently do mediocre work? Or, are we actually hurting his or her long-term chances for success?

The Four Pieces of Paper

I learned the approach below from my friend and mentor, John Spence. He calls the approach The Four Pieces of Paper.

Although variations of it can be used with any team member who is underperforming, the approach is very powerful when thoughts come to mind of letting someone go.

When having a conversation with a team member who has been underperforming, we can frame the discussion by saying something like, “I expect really great things from you. Recently, I don’t think what you’ve been doing is up to your standards. What’s going on?”

Then we can let the team member know that we’d like them to have the greatest chance for success for years to come. Not encouraging them to reach their full potential is doing them a disservice.

We then allow them to create a solution, which they will write on four pieces of paper. The team member writes:

1. What will they achieve in a given period that they feel adequately makes up for the previous poor performance
2. What do they need from us, as their leader, to make that happen
3. What should the reward be, within reason, if they hit the mark
4. What should the consequence be if they fail

Using this approach, you might find that a team member you thought you would have to fire suddenly turns around simply because you showed them you care about them.

You’ll also find that if they don’t hit the mark, you won’t have to fire them.

They’ll have written, “I should leave,” on the fourth piece of paper because they’ll see that they picked the goal and were given all the support they needed to accomplish it. If they still don’t hit the mark, they’ll almost always see that they are simply not in the right place and voluntarily move on.

As a compassionate, servant leader, we could then help the team member find a position within our organization, or even outside of it, where she or he could thrive.

Please leave me a comment below if you apply these ideas.  I’d love to hear about your experience.

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There’s an old business axiom: What gets measured gets done.

Most organizations seem to do a good job at measuring things like sales and quarterly profits.  But very few measure what really matters.

Unfortunately, being too focused on short-term metrics, even quarterly financial reports, can be devastating for an organization’s long-term success. Former Medtronic CEO Bill George—who achieved extraordinary business success by every metric—makes it very clear why this is so in his book Authentic Leadership.

To put it simply, we eventually fail to serve the customer when we focus on quarterly financials. And no business survives very long without customers. This kind of focus makes us much more likely to want to cut costs than to balance the reduction of expenses with the long-term investments that are absolutely vital for actually serving our customers.

As Bill writes, “Inevitably, the short-term opportunities to increase shareholder value taper off. At this point top management usually turns to financial restructuring to achieve its financial goals. Nonstrategic acquisitions, divestitures, consolidations, layoffs, and cutbacks generally follow. By the time these financial moves are completed, the corporation has lost its capacity for growth. Restoring the firm to a growth company at this point is a long, arduous process.”

Of course, this is not to say that we shouldn’t be aware of our quarterly financial numbers, or that we should eliminate them as a metric. The point is simply that if we want to have consistent long-term growth in our organizations, we can’t just focus on short-term financials.

We need to focus on the underlying elements of the organizations that create the conditions for long-term growth and profitability: happy, loyal employees who ensure that we have happy, loyal customers. And the best way to increase our focus on these things that really matter is to measure them.

We can measure the health of the organization as a whole by asking team members questions like:

• How happy are you at home?
• How happy are you at work?
• How would you explain the vision and mission of our organization?
• To what degree do you feel your daily work contributes to our vision and mission?
• How well do you feel our organization as a whole lives our core values?
• What can we do to help you enjoy your home life more?
• What can we do to help you enjoy coming to work more?

For the best results, leaders need to ask these questions in face-to-face meetings. An e-mail survey doesn’t have nearly the same impact as real human beings asking other human beings questions that show how much we care.

We can also apply this practice of measuring what really matters to ourselves, and to the organization’s other leaders. If we expect our leaders to live our core values and focus on serving those around them, we must measure precisely those things.

As Joel Manby points out in his book Love Works, many organizations are great at measuring what he calls do goals—the success of the customer experience, employee satisfaction, safety results, brand strength, and financials. But very few measure what Manby calls be goals—those we set for how we want our leaders to treat each other and the members of their teams while they are working to accomplish the “do” goals.

In essence, the “be” goals measure how well a leader lives the core values and fits in with the culture. Leaders at HFE are not only measured on how well they achieve the “do” goals, but their performance on “be” goals is also important. In fact, their compensation is directly tied to how well they do on both; in order to even qualify to be a senior leader at HFE, a person must excel at both.

To get the best measure of the “be” goals we set for our leaders, we should consider gathering anonymous, 360-degree feedback from employees and peers, and getting feedback from seniors in person.

We can ask questions (reformulated for accurate survey measurement, of course) such as:

• How well does Bob listen?
• How willing is Bob to help others?
• How important to Bob is the happiness and success of the people he leads?
• How kind is Bob?
• How compassionate is Bob?
• How well does Bob live core value A (repeat for each value)?

In essence, we’re asking, “How well does Bob love his team members?” Of course, we’re not talking about some romantic feeling that people often confuse with love. We’re talking about acts of love—extending oneself for others’ benefit and treating them with kindness and compassion and respect.

When we commit to measuring how well we love those around us, and how well the other leaders in our organization love those around them, we can dramatically improve the business outcomes for our organizations.

This helps us focus on the parts of our leadership development that are the most essential for achieving positive long-term business outcomes.

It also makes our lives much more fulfilling.

Please leave me a comment below if you apply these ideas.  I’d love to hear about your experience.

This piece is an adapted excerpt from the book Serve to Be Great: Leadership Lessons from a Prison, a Monastery, and a Boardroom.

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It seems that one thing highly successful companies do that many average companies fail to do is prioritize values ahead of skills when hiring new employees.

This is something leaders of any type of team can, and should, practice.

Of course, in most cases, we want to ensure that someone has the basic skill set we need for the position.  But that should be determined via skills tests, checking with references, and/or an interview that is completely separate from the interview screening for values.

We should have at least one interview that focuses on nothing other than determining if the potential teammate we are considering shares the values of our team.

There are several reasons why this is so important:

1.  This is a great way to serve and care for our team members.  Shared values is one of the strongest forms of social glue, resulting in much more cohesive teams that consist of members who work very well together and are much more engaged.  Conversely, when we bring on a team member who does not share our values, team cohesiveness is likely to degrade rather quickly and engagement is likely to drop.

2.  When we have engaged team members who consistently live the shared values of the team, we also find that we have happier, more loyal customers.  Often, customers are as attracted to our values as they are to the product or service we offer.

If a customer interacts with a team member that doesn’t live the values the customer expects us to be living, she or he may become a little less loyal.  If the violation is severe enough, she or he may leave us altogether.

Conversely, when customers experience the same values-based behaviors from team members each and every time they interact with our organization, our brand is strengthened in their minds.  Loyalty and satisfaction are a very likely result.

3.  By taking our time during the hiring process to ensure that a team member shares our values, we can save a lot of time and money in the long term.

It’s almost a certainty that if we bring on a team member who does not share our values, she or he will either quit or need to be let go within a short time.  This is very costly in terms of both time wasted and money.  Most HR professionals estimate that it costs around one year of salary to turnover a mid-level employee, and significantly more for senior leaders.

How to Hire For Values

If we want to ensure that a potential team member shares our values, there are several steps we can take:

1.  We should ensure that our recruiting materials – including website, brochures, etc. – clearly articulate our values.  This can help a candidate to determine on her own whether or not she should even take the time to apply and interview.

2.  We should ask interview questions that require a candidate to explain a situations where he lived each one of our values.  It’s not enough just to ask what his values are.  He could be influenced by our recruiting materials and simply regurgitate them back to us.  We can learn a lot by watching a candidate think through and reply to a question like, “Tell me about a time when you put the mission of the team ahead of your own personal ambition.”

3.  You could take this process a step further by creating games or role-playing situations where candidates actually have to demonstrate values when put into situations that test their responses.  This is exactly what a travel company called Grand Circle Corporation does.  You can read about how they do it in this article in the Harvard Business Review.

Please leave me a comment below if you apply these ideas.  I’d love to hear about your experience.

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Recently, I spoke for the Tennessee Society of Association Executives at a hotel and conference center outside of Nashville, TN.  The evening before the day I would present, I took a walk around the property to scope out the room where I would deliver the keynote.

As I walked back to my hotel room, a staff member of the hotel came out of an office and walked toward me.

She almost looked at me, but didn’t.  She sort of smiled – that rather fake kind of smile – then stared intently at the ground as she walked and did her best to communicate non-verbally that she was thinking of something very important and she was not to be bothered.

Have you ever walked by someone like that?  They make it clear that they know you’re there, but they don’t make eye contact and make it clear they want to avoid interacting.

How did that make you feel?

In the case of the hotel staff member, I immediately thought, “This woman is in the wrong industry.”  That kind of avoidance sends the message to guests that they aren’t that important.  Whatever she was thinking about was more important than the guests.

Conversely, in hotels with excellent service, everyone makes it clear that the guests are more important than anything else.  Everyone makes eye contact and offers to be of help in some way.

I think there’s a great takeaway here for leaders, whether we have a title or not.

When we’re walking around the workplace, we always have a choice.  We could be texting like the woman in the image above.  We could keep our heads down and think a lot, like the hotel staff member I described above.

The better choice is to just walk – to be fully present with act of walking – and to be open to connecting with anyone we walk by.  We can think or text later, when we are alone.

There are many benefits to this, including the following:

1.  Walking becomes a chance for us get out of our heads a bit and unwind any anxiety that has been building up. When we’re aware of our bodies and the fact that we’re walking, we might notice that we’re tense or anxious.  This awareness helps us let it go.  Thus, we go into our next task or interaction with a better emotional state and a better chance for a positive outcome.

2.  We get a better pulse of what’s happening around us. This can range from the very obvious – where things are that we should avoid bumping into – to the very subtle, but also important – the emotional climate of the workplace.  If the emotional climate of the workplace is not positive, we should look into what’s going on and how we can help.

3.  By keeping our head up while we walk, open to connecting with those we pass by, we have the ability to make eye contact with people and offer a smile. If we consistently share heartfelt, genuine smiles with people, it can go a long way to improving a workplace culture.

4.  We can also notice the emotional state of individual people and take a moment to connect with someone who appears to be experiencing a negative emotion like anxiety, or sadness. This simple connection shows people we truly care about them, and can help them to both enjoy their day more fully and also be more productive.

I have three suggestions for improving your ability to have a positive connection with team members as a result of more consistently keeping your head up and being open while walking.

1.  Before walking anywhere, take a moment to pause a commit to being fully present while you walk without texting, reading, or allowing yourself to be pulled into distraction by thinking.

2.  Look at people you pass by – whether they’re looking at you or not – with an attitude of kindness and helpfulness.

3.  If you feel compelled to go back to thinking or texting while walking, or if you get distracted, gently remind yourself to start over with steps 1 and 2.

Please leave me a comment below if you apply these ideas.  I’d love to hear about your experience.

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One of the deepest human needs is to feel appreciated.  According to William James, in fact, “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”

When we appreciate others sincerely, we give them something that they may rarely if ever receive in their lives.  We’re providing a wonderful gift.

Appreciating team members for meeting or exceeding expectations for performance or behaving in according with stated values is also one of the simplest ways to boost performance in the workplace.

According to a great article on Business News Daily, research conducted by the HR firm Bersin & Associates suggests that companies that do very well at recognizing employees are about 12 times more likely than their peers to realize positive business outcomes like higher profitability and better market leadership positions.  Also, in companies with strong recognition programs, employee engagement, productivity, and customer service are roughly 14 percent better than in companies that do not reward and recognize employees well.

As an added bonus, when done well, recognizing and appreciating team members costs very little, or nothing at all.

Effective recognition programs ensure that everyone who meets or exceeds expectations is recognized, and that the recognition occurs as close to the time of the achievement as possible.

With one minor addition to the mix, we can make our efforts to recognize team members even more effective.  We can transform appreciation into an art.

In my blog post last week, we discussed the “How can I serve you?” meeting and some of the questions we might ask during that meeting to show a team member that we truly care about her or him, and to gather information that will help us to serve that team member in the future.

An additional question we can ask is, “If you were to do something that I really appreciated and I wanted to thank you for it, what are some ways that you’d like to be appreciated?”

This question is another powerful way to show that we truly care about the person on our team.  It also helps ensure that we offer appreciation in a way that the person would actually like.  This is very important.

Imagine, for instance, that we wanted to recognize a team member, and she is an extreme introvert.  But we just recognize her in the same way we’ve always recognized.  We bring her up in front of the whole team and show her picture and ask her to say a few words.

For an extreme introvert, this might be more like punishment than a reward.  She might much prefer some simple words of appreciation in private and a day off to have some alone time in nature.

In the excellent book The Carrot Principle, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton write, “Perhaps the most difficult portion of the recognition process is choosing a form of recognition that taps into an employee’s motivation triggers.”

When we tailor our efforts to show appreciation to be aligned to each of our team members, we can have a huge impact.  As Gostick and Elton continue, “Among the leaders we have observed who take the time and interest to personalize recognition, it has made all the difference in employee performance.”

One of my favorite examples of really well-thought-out appreciation, based on true understanding of what a team member values, is how my good friend John Spence recognized a team member who valued family more than anything else in her life.

When John wanted to show deep appreciation for her excellent performance, he wrote a letter to her family, describing in detail why their mother / wife was such an amazing human being and such a valuable member of the team.

This may have been the most powerful appreciation she had ever experienced, and likely had a significant impact on her continued performance.  The cost to John and his company was nothing but 10 or 15 minutes of time.

More important than the nice ROI, though, is that both John and the team member received a great deal of fulfillment from that experience, fulfillment they both likely remember to this day.

Please leave me a comment below if you apply these ideas.  I’d love to hear about your experience.

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We get to the office.  We’re excited to start the day.  We’re not quite sure where to begin.  What do we do?

Many of us open our e-mail inbox to see what goodies might be awaiting us.  This in and of itself is not a bad thing.  However, how often does that lead to 30 or 60 minutes or more of being stuck in “e-mail land”?

Most productivity gurus recommend not opening e-mail until after we’ve taken time to reflect on the top two or three things we really want to get done – things that could make a big impact – and taking action on them.

I believe that one of those things should be taking time to reflect on how we can better serve the people on our team, however that’s defined for us.  I have this on my calendar as the first thing I do every day.

There is a lot of value to taking 10-15 minutes or so each day to reflect on the question, “How can I better serve?”  It gets us in a great state of mind to start the day, and it can often lead to new ideas for better serving the people on our teams.

To make this time even more valuable, we should make sure we have a “How I can serve you?” meeting with everyone on our team.

A “How I can serve you?” meeting is simply taking around 30 minutes to sit down with a team member and ask them questions that allow us to learn what’s important to them.

We should ask questions like:

• What’s most important to you in your life right now in terms of what you have in your life?
• What’s most important to you in your life right now in terms of who you are as a person?
• What are your top three personal goals for this year, and for five years from now?
• What are your top three professional goals for this year within our organization?
• What are your top three professional goals for the next five years, whether with us or not?

The person may not have the answers off the top of her head, but just asking these questions shows that we actually care about her.  For those that need more time to consider, we can ask that written answers be submitted in a few days.

In addition to showing a team member that we care about him, there are two other significant benefits to “How I can serve you?” meeting:

1. The team member may have never considered these questions before. When he does, he’ll likely get great clarity on his life, and he’ll be thankful for your help with that.
2. Once we have written answers to the questions above, we’ll have plenty of things to consider during the time we spend reflecting each day on how we can better serve. Reviewing the answers will give us ideas for how we could help or, at a minimum, reminders to check up on progress with a caring intention.

The best time to have a “How I can serve you?” meeting is during the onboarding process.  This can be a great addition to the other tools you employ to help a new team member feel very welcomed and cared for.

But we can have a “How I can serve you?” meeting any time, with any team member, regardless of how long he or she has been with us.  It’s never too late to take our servant leadership game to a higher level.  In fact, it’s a good idea to have the meeting at least annually to keep abreast of the normal changes in priorities for the people on our teams.

Please leave me a comment below if you apply these ideas.  I’d love to hear about your experience.

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My friend, the purpose of this post is to simply demonstrate why your opinion sucks.

Don’t worry, though. You’re not alone.

My opinion sucks, too.

I actually don’t have anything against your opinion. What I would like to demonstrate is that all opinions suck.

Or, more precisely, I’d like to suggest that attaching to any opinion is unskillful and will result in less than optimal outcomes in both our personal and professional lives.

It’s Natural to Form Opinions

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t have opinions. I’m not sure that would even be possible.

The formation of opinions is a very natural part of being human. When we perceive something through our senses, the brain naturally starts classifying what we perceive and putting it into categories.

It probably starts in the reptile brain with classifications like “threat or not a threat,” “food or not food,” or “potential mate or not a potential mate.”

And, before we know it, we add on some variation of, “I like this,” or “I don’t like this.”

There is no problem up to this point.

The Problem Is Attachment

The problems start when we attach to our opinions – when we become our opinions or allow our opinions to become a part of us.

There are telltale signs of when this happens.

One sign is that if someone shares an opinion contrary to our own, we’ll notice some type of emotional response in our bodies. We might feel anger and want to defend our opinion.

If we experience an emotion like anger when someone expresses an opinion contrary to ours, we immediately become less effective.

Our decision-making ability is diminished. People don’t want to be around us. And, we experience harmful physical consequences like the ones described in this article.

This article originally appeared on the Huffington Post.  To continue reading, please click here.

For those of us who aspire to be a servant leader who truly cares about team members, it can be easy to fall victim to the tendency to be overly accepting of mediocre work because we want to be “nice.”

Although being kind and compassionate towards others is an essential trait of being a servant leader, accepting mediocrity is not.

Accepting anything less than excellence is actually a failure to serve others.

When we accept mediocre work from a team member, we actually do him a terrible disservice.  We are enabling him to stop growing and, even worse, to think that mediocrity is acceptable.  Thus, we prevent him from advancing within our organization, and we set him up for failure should he move to another organization one day.

Also, when we accept mediocre work from one team member, we tell everyone else on the team that mediocrity is okay.  This can crush motivation and create inertia.  As team performance declines, mediocrity can spread like a disease.

This is a disservice to the entire team.  No one gets excited about being on a team that sucks.

A servant leader works to help team members grow both personally and professionally, and to reach their full potential.

To assist in this process, there are several things we can do.

1.  We should involve the team member in the goal setting process. We could allow her to consider what would be some goals that are challenging, and set goals that we both agree would be examples of excellence.

2.  We should make sure that any expectations we have – whether created by us or co-created with the team member – are crystal clear. There must be a clear vision of what success looks like.

The clearest expectations are binary.  They either are achieved, or not achieved.  This eliminates subjectivity and ambiguity.

3.  We need to let team members know that they will be held accountable to the expectations set, and that not holding them accountable would be a disservice to them and the team for the reasons mentioned above.

4.  We need to make sure the team member has everything she needs to meet expectations.

5.  We should be firm about not expecting anything less than excellence.

6.  We should celebrate every single example of excellence.

What are some tools that you employ to create a culture of excellence on your team?

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As we near Thanksgiving Day this year, which  reminds us to be grateful, I thought it would be appropriate to offer a gentle reminder to show our gratitude for the people on our teams.

According to my good friend John Spence, named one of the top 100 business thought leaders by Trust Across America, if team members don’t receive genuine, specific appreciation for a period of 7-10 days, their engagement levels decrease noticeably.

A simple way to keep engagement levels higher is to make sure we show appreciation as frequently as possible.

Some leaders hear this and think that they should put a note on their calendar to go around appreciating people for whatever they notice.  But that is not likely to be very effective.

A better approach is to create a new habit of mind – a habit of catching people doing things right.

Although simple, this is certainly not easy.  The human brain is naturally hardwired to pay more attention to what’s wrong than to what’s right.  This was pretty important for us as a species for quite some time back in the day when we had to be constantly on the lookout for animals that could eat us.

With practice though, we can improve.  And it could start by noticing little things that you appreciate.

You could make a note on your calendar to take 2 or 3 opportunities to observe team members and look for things you appreciate about their work, or about how they’re living the values of your organization.

You could make a new habit of simply asking in your mind, “What’s right about this?” when reviewing a team member’s work or behavior.

You could have a brief weekly meeting that starts with pointing out something positive you’ve noticed for each person in attendance.

You could make a commitment to celebrate all goals achieved, not just goals exceeded.

Gradually, we want to create a habit that allows us to be on the lookout for people doing things right so that we never miss an opportunity to show a team member genuine, specific appreciation for work or behaviors that we’d like to see more of.

What are some of the ways that you’ve found helpful for showing genuine, specific appreciation every 7-10 days?

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The world is replete with organizations with great strategies. But how many of those great strategies are actually executed?

Less than 15%. That’s the number that John Spence shared with me when we spoke recently.

John is the author Awesomely Simple, and an executive trainer and coach who has worked as a trusted advisor with numerous Fortune 500 companies over the last 20 years.

When we spoke, we discussed what he’s noticed about organizations that are very successful at building and sustaining high performance teams that effectively execute strategies.

Following are the highlights from our discussion. (If you’d like to watch the video of the interview, click here.)

John’s advice is to focus on creating and sustaining a winning workplace culture. If we get the culture right, we can create the conditions for excellent execution.

My discussion with John revealed 6 powerful, easily-actionable ideas for creating and sustaining a culture of high performance.

1. People need to feel safe in the workplace.

Of course, people need to know that they’re physically safe. But they also need to know that they are emotionally and psychologically safe.

A winning culture must include an environment where people know that they will not be attacked emotionally, and they need to know that they can openly and safely share ideas.

2. People need to feel that they belong to something that matters.

As humans, we naturally seek out something bigger than ourselves to belong to. We can help fulfill this deep, human need by creating a workplace where people are inspired by the work we do, and can see how their work is tied to the big picture.

Knowing how important this sense of belongingness is, when taking on new team members, we should also pay close attention to whether or not a person would be a good fit for our culture. If a person doesn’t feel that they fit in, they could quickly become disengaged.

This article was originally published on the Huffington Post.  To continue reading, please click here.