These lists are not THE exhaustive or complete list for any team that needs to increase revenue. Each situation is unique and therefore customized. Though these may seem to be obvious behaviors for achieving business goals, they were built from the ground up so that the leader was convinced that this particular combination would make a difference. It does not matter that many of them happen to also appear on generic leader competency lists. For the same reason that leader competency lists rarely stir people to transform their leadership, leaders and teams tend not to mobilize around a generic list as effectively as they mobilize around their lists.
Truth in Advertising: Leaders Will Balk
In many ways working with a leader to identify the three Key Factors seems so straightforward as to be simplistic. However, dealing with a real world leader feeling pressure in the workplace is another matter entirely. Executives are so compelled by forces internally and externally to “act first and think later” that they have a hard time settling down enough to be thoughtful, specific, and integrated.
Often, when you ask executives to identify the three Key Factors regarding a business issue, they either look at you blankly, shrug the exercise off as a waste of time, or claim that they already have all that in place. These reactions indicate an anxious leader rather than an irrelevant exercise. A coach needs to develop a thick skin to an executive’s resistance to thoughtfully engage with the three Key Factors.
One way to begin a productive discussion of the three Key Factors is to start with the Key Factor that energizes the leader the most. The sequence is not important; you can start with leader behaviors as easily as starting with either business results or team behaviors. Though Anne was quite willing to take ownership for improving her and her team’s performance, sometimes I work with executives who are fixated on laying blame on their teams. In those situations I reflect and amplify that energy by asking for a list of all the ways in which the team does not function well. The executive typically has no problem creating a list, e.g., 1) they don’t take initiative, 2) they fight with each other, 3) they are unprepared for meetings, etc. The list can quite easily convert into categories for the team interactions Factor by simply replacing the negative actions with positive ones, e.g., 1) they take initiative, 2) they collaborate with each other, 3) they prepare for meetings. This gives the coach and leader a starting point to make specific, proactive, and measurable behaviors for each item on the team interactions list. It’s then easier to ask leaders what behaviors they must exhibit in order to create an effective team. Your client can next identify the leader behaviors factor that will create a synergy between the leader’s and the team’s interactions.
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