Jerry's Blog

In this article, we will be focusing on the initial steps to begin changing the behaviors that lead to a higher level of accountability. For this article, we will assume that you are the official leader of this group; i.e. you are the boss. Being the boss makes it much easier to drive behavior changes but that does not mean that you cannot do it if you are not the boss. It just takes longer and you must think more strategically. We will cover tips for the non-boss later on in this series. We will also assume that you have read Tips 1 & 2 and have begun implementing the suggestions from those articles. This piece builds squarely on those two steps so if you have not read those tips then I suggest you do so now.

At this point you should be personally demonstrating a higher level of accountability yourself and have built a consensus among your staff and employees that change is needed in their behavior. Now you need to take positive steps to create the beginnings of group wide change. First, tell them as a group what you are going to do and ask for their help in accomplishing it. What you are going to do is to do a better job of developing SMART Goals, setting clear expectations around those goals and following up on a regular, timely and proactive basis. What you need their help in is developing and agreeing to those SMART Goals, asking questions to ensure that expectations are clear, and be ready with real answers when you follow-up. You will need to explain in detail what each of those steps entails and how it will affect them personally. We will come back to each one of these items and address them separately so that you understand them yourself. As I have stated several times in the other tips, this is a lifestyle change. You and every member of your group will have to do things differently.

Next, you want to schedule a one-on-one meeting with each individual on your team. During this meeting, you will need to confirm their support. They will need to understand that you are going to be asking more of them and that you will be following up on a more frequent basis. This does not mean that you have lost faith in them or that they are doing anything wrong. What it means is that you are interested in their being successful in accomplishing their goals, that the only way you can help them is to ask questions, and for them to be forthcoming about their progress and the problems they are encountering in accomplishing those tasks. Once agreement and support has been achieved, then delve into the goals development and the setting of expectations. The individual meetings require planning. The more time spent on planning the meeting, the shorter and more productive the meeting will be. As a rule of thumb, meetings of this type should take an equal amount of time to plan as to execute. In other words planning for a half hour meeting should take about a half hour. A little longer for the first couple and a little less as you develop your theme and rhythm. While planning the meeting consider the individual and their strengths and weaknesses, how they are performing currently and what you want the outcome of the meeting to be. You should define in writing what goals do you want them to agree to, and how are you going to position them to reach those goals. Putting it in writing will help you clarify it in your mind and increase your resolve to get that outcome. You should also list out your expectations in writing so that you don't forget to cover a critical point. You cannot hold someone accountable to an expectation you never set. At the end of the meeting, you should summarize the goals and expectations and get verbal agreement as to what was agreed upon. Immediately following the meeting, those items should be documented in writing and a copy given to the employee for their records.

In Tip #4, we will take a step back and review how to set SMART goals and clear expectations.

On a flight Tuesday I was reading the chapter on formal presentations in Ford Harding’s book - Rain Making when I came across the section entitled “How you say it is as important as what you say.” The example that Ford uses is the three words “Oh, it’s you.” He shows how those three words can communicate many very different messages depending on the tone, volume, pitch and other verbal and non-verbal inflections used.

This reminded me of an episode that occurred with a client several years ago. I was working with one of our teams at a call center down in Central America. The department in question handled service calls for a US computer manufacturer. I was listening in on calls with a Quality Control Coach, a local, who was to give feedback to the rep after the calls. The first call went something like this:

Rep: (Thick Latin American accent) “Welcome to ______ … How can I help you today?”

Caller: “Oh great! a foreign call center” (heavy sarcasm in voice).

QC Coach: (writing notes) “Customer happy that the call center is not in US.”

Caller: “I just got this fantastic piece of crap from you last week and the hard drive is already toast.” (not sounding like a very happy customer at all)

QC Coach: (Writing notes) “Customer said the computer was ‘fantastic’, but having trouble with hard drive.

Rep: “Thank you for saying our computers are fantastic, but I am not sure what you mean by ‘toast’. Do you mean that the hard drive is not working?”

Caller: “Boy you’re quick! Yeahhh, that’s what I mean. T H E   H A R D  D R I V E  I S  N O T  W O R R K K K I N G!! (spoken very slowly and emphatically)”

QC Coach: “Customer being very helpful, speaking very clearly and slowly so we can help him better.”

…call went on for a while with both sides struggling to understand what the other was saying. In the end,  a service tech was dispatched to replace the hard drive…

Rep: “Thank you for being a customer and we are sorry you had this problem. Have we resolved your problem at this time?”

Caller: “Yeah, great #$% help you’ve been. I wish all companies used @#$% foreigners. Makes things so much &^*% fun.” (Sarcasm dripping from every syllable).

QC Coach: (Still taking notes) “Customer very satisfied with service. Wished that more US companies used us.”

The point of this story is two fold:

1. Ford is absolutely right in his point that how you say things are just as important as what you say. Especially when setting expectations with your employees. How you say things can convey sense of urgency or a lack there of, as well as many other things.
2. Understand who your audience is. People from a different cultural background may not understand your verbal inflections, such as sarcasm, and non-verbal expressions. So when you use tone and pitch to convey a certain meaning to your words, make sure that the audience will get it.