Improve Your People Development Skills

One of the top reasons executives look to a leadership advisor like me is for help in improving their people development skills. Like you, these executives have a strong desire to create a work environment that sets their employees up for success. They know that a healthy, productive environment leads to employees who are more focused on the success of the business.

But people development skills don't come easy -- even for the most astute leader.

My clients, regardless of team size, type or personnel issue, have one thing in common: They need help identifying how each employee (regardless of title or position) defines success, and they need a strategy for creating a professional development plan that gets results.

Step 1: Identify Success on their Terms
Many times my clients think that all their employees define success as money and promotion. Clearly, money and promotion are valued by employees, but why these things are valued above others is equally important. Here are some questions to ask that will help you understand individual employee needs and, more importantly, individual employee motivations.

• Is the employee looking for wealth, a certain quality of life or something else?
• Does the employee have family financial obligations that shape the way they view success?
• Does the employee desire to be promoted because their peers are being promoted, because they think it's "time," or because they feel they'll be challenged more in the new position?
• Is it the title or something else that gives the employee satisfaction and provides fulfillment?
• Ask probing questions like these until you uncover your employee's personal definition of success.

Step 2: Get Buy-In from the Employee
Once you know what motivates your employee, engage them in incorporating goals and tactics into their performance plan. That way the employee can clearly see when s/he has accomplished or deviated from the plan.

A jointly developed plan accomplishes two things. First, it leads my clients to better manage their employee's expectations. And second, it leads their employees to better manage themselves toward achieving the goals they now "own."

Success Breeds Success
Is this two-step process too simple to be truly valuable? Absolutely not! The reality of human nature is that personal contribution and ownership in a plan or an idea yields an exponentially higher opportunity for success. Ultimately, when employees are actively engaged in the creation of a personal development plan, they are much more likely to ensure that the company's interests and goals are met along with their own.

Additional Resources: Destination Success by Dwight Bain and Building a High Morale Workplace by Anne Bruce

Better Communications Starts with the Right Questions

Most of us would agree that just about everyone needs to expand or improve their communication skills. If you want to communicate better and more effectively with others, start by improving the communication you have with yourself.

Ask yourself these questions — and answer them honestly:

• What do I say to myself when things go right?


• What comments and questions come into my thoughts when things are not going well in a specific situation or in my life in general?


• Do I ask questions that result in my doing things more effectively the next time?


• Do I ask questions that cause others to become defensive or do I ask questions that allow us to have a good, productive discussion?

Now that you've answered these questions, are you sure of your answers? Really sure?

When my clients really pay attention to their personal and interpersonal skills over time, many of them find they revise their original answers. And you may, too.

The reality is that we are usually very hard on ourselves, so our thoughts focus on what we have done wrong, or what we wish we would have said or done, or what we have to do next. Seldom do we have a naturally developed ability to revel in our successes or to ask ourselves what we learned from a situation.

What would life be like if you reduced or discontinued your negative conversations with yourself? And how would that impact your conversations with others?

The QuestionThinking Model
Marilee Adams writes about using QuestionThinking in all our communications. The idea behind QuestionThinking is to ask questions and to learn not to judge.

So instead of saying, "What will they think of my idea?" ask yourself "What do I want them to do as a result of hearing my new idea?" or "How can I best help this person understand my new idea?"

If you're someone who says to yourself, "I can’t believe I said that!" ask yourself instead, "What happened when I said those things? How can I say them differently?"

I ask clients to create new phrases to begin their questions. For example, "Help me understand the options you evaluated …." or "Tell me how you arrived at your conclusion about ..." might be more powerful words for opening a discussion with an employee who is apt to defend their mistakes.

Using questions to help others see your point of view or to help them become more open to discussing sensitive issues will make you a more effective leader or manager.

Additional Resources: Change Your Questions, Change Your Life: 7 Powerful Tools for Life and Work by Merilee G. Adams