I've always believed and taught that any communication that may result in a strong emotional response should always be delivered in person.

We use email, Whatsapp and sms too often when we should have an in-person conversation.

The point is that you cannot contain or manage a strong emotional response unless you communicate in person. You cannot manage incorrect assumptions or interpretations if you send crucial messages electronically.

The other may take as "obvious" something that couldn't have been further from your mind.

So before you click "send" on the email or Whatsapp message, ask yourself "How might the recipient respond? Is there any chance their response might be strong?" Even if you only answer "maybe", reconsider. This might be better delivered in person.

Leadership is exercised one conversation at a time - not via email or sms or WhatsApp. So we miss vital opportunities to exercise leadership and influence the direction of a communication positively when we default to email or text.

This video talks a bit more about this.

It is my very firm belief that we lead one conversation at a time – because leadership is relational. Everything we do in the working environment is with or through people – so via our relationships - and relationships are built one conversation at a time There are dozens of occasions every day that are an opportunity to exercise leadership – and they are often squandered by sending an email!
So often I find myself astounded at the mindless way in which many people work. They talk about the frustrations that they have with their team members’ lack of progress or disappointing execution despite the fact that they have emailed them numerous times! I am always concerned when I hear about complex work being delegated by email, so my standard question is “Where are these team members located?” Of course, I’m a bit of a smartass, so I know the answer to this question – “Oh, in the open plan outside my office.”

That is when silence is my best friend.
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Let’s be clear. We are all vulnerable to working on autopilot. We receive an email about some important initiative, and we delegate this on by email. In fact, how much of our day do we spend reading and responding to emails? There is just too much that is done by email that really should be done via the medium of conversation.
If you are frustrated by team members who send emails to each other from adjoining desks, then you have the opportunity to model the way in terms of how you exercise leadership and build relationships yourself. 
How many times a day do you leave your desk just in order to check in with the people around you? How many times a day do you pick up the phone to team members working remotely from you just to see how it's going? Are you too busy for this? If you are too busy to care, then you will find that your leadership team is probably also too busy to care. And then the whole organisation is too busy to care. That's how toxic cultures are created - not through malice, but through lack of care.
But let's not see this as a purely altruistic thing. Leaders connect with their people and teams as much for themselves as they do for other people! According to Steve Siegle, quoted in an article on the Mayo Clinic Health System "Being kind boosts serotonin and dopamine, which are neurotransmitters in the brain that give you feelings of satisfaction and well-being, and cause the pleasure/reward centers in your brain to light up. Endorphins, which are your body's natural pain killer, also can be released." Serotonin impacts on our ability to focus, and focus is critical to the quality of our work - so caring and kindness boost output! It's in the interests of organisational performance to create a culture of care and kindness - it just makes good business sense.

This article is a follow-on to my previous article: http://www.leadershipsolutions.co.za/articles/how-to-decide-what-to-track-and-monitor-focus-on-the-field-of-play, which you should read before this one.
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Too often, with my coaching clients, we have to address the problem that the team is resistant to the way their activities are measured. Perhaps they see their weekly activity report as admin – so they “tick the boxes”, telling their managers what they think they want to hear (or, in this case, read). Perhaps they just don’t agree with it, so they don’t bother to do it at all – or they have to be nagged 90 times before they do it. And, again, they do a shoddy job. They may or may not also tell you that they find it a waste of time. Or they may say nothing, and just give you the teenage eye roll!
The reasons for the resistance are some combination of:

• They don’t get it – meaning they don’t see these measures as important drivers of their results;
• They don’t see the value and they treat the process as admin;
• They don’t like the way the measures are recorded or reflected;
• They see it as micromanaging (which most people resist).

What you really want is the following:

• The team absolutely agrees that these measures represent their 20 mile march – they definitely drive achievement against the KPIs;
• The team has participated in setting the targets (or the target ranges for these measures);
• The team has been involved in designing the scoreboard – this is the document on which their performance (collective and individual) is reflected;
• They find the process of recording and reflecting on their team and individual performance motivating;
• They love the way the scoreboard looks and what it tells them and they get excited about reviewing their progress.

Agreeing on What to Watch
You will need to have one or more discussions in your team with a view to answering the following questions:

1. What are the behaviours or activities that drive each one of our KPIs?
This can be quite a rich discussion. There may be many drivers of your KPIs, but your objective here is to identify the clear performance markers that deliver achievement against the KPIs for your team. You must be able to set lower and upper limits for performance. These performance markers must be within the team’s control to achieve. They must have an appropriate timeframe – long enough to be able to manage them, and short enough to have an impact.
Settle on no more than 4 performance markers per KPI. It must not be a shopping list or tracking it will become a burden.

2. Set the lower and upper range of acceptable performance.
The key here is consistency. You do not want people to shoot the lights out on good days and do nothing on bad days (or weeks or months). You want them to do between the low mark and the high mark every day, week or month (or whatever time frame you choose). Using the language of the 20 mile march, you want them to march between 14 and 20 miles every single day, no matter the weather. You do not want them marching 40 miles on one day, then collapsing with exhaustion for the next 2 days, and being unable to go out on the 3rd day because of bad weather. 14 to 20 miles every day.

3. Design a Scoreboard
The team should decide on what the scoreboard should look like. It must be fun to update and use. You should be able to update it as close to real time as possible. It should also connect input measures (the behavioural drivers) with the KPIs. That means you should be able to see how performance against the behavioural drivers actually contributes to performance against the KPI.

I did an internet search using “how to put team metrics on a scoreboard” and came up with some exceptional guidelines.

Your team’s scoreboard may no doubt undergo a few iterations before the team is completely satisfied – and that is fine.

The scoreboard you settle on will meet the following criteria:

• The team will love how it looks
• It will be easy to update
• It will be updatable in as close to real time as possible
• The team will love updating it and reviewing their progress
• Individuals will be able to use it to motivate themselves

All of this speaks to the power of instant feedback. The best example of this I have ever seen is in the advertisement for bottled water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GimoLDYI_JE.

4. Agree on the Rituals and Routines
Rituals and routines are those things that are done regularly and in a disciplined way in order to ensure that you and your team are paying attention to the important issues regularly enough.

Rituals tend to be interpersonal exchanges – meetings; coffee sessions; tele- or videoconferences. Examples of rituals include:

• The Monday morning meeting (teleconference/videoconference) to discuss priorities for the week;
• Your daily walk around the office or plant to take the pulse of the team;
• The team brown bag lunch session held once a month;
• The weekly scoreboard review;
• The monthly review of past performance and planning for the coming month.

Routines are activities that take place consistently. Examples of routines include:

• Checking yesterday’s performance every day before 9.00am and noting down any required follow up;
• Updating the Scoreboard or Project Tracking Boards;
• Making your appointments for next week every Thursday afternoon;
• Updating your activity records after (or during) every customer meeting

The team needs to agree on the appropriate rituals and routines that will keep them on track as both a team and as individuals. What will they do? What will you do? How will the scoreboard be updated? How often will you meet as a team to review progress and troubleshoot any issues? What is your agenda for that meeting?

So think about this:
What will you do with your team in order to reach agreement on the behavioural drivers, the targets for each one, the design of a scoreboard, and rituals and routines to be implemented?

Managing the Rituals and Routines
The Manager of the team us ultimately responsible for ensuring that the team is absolutely consistent in taking the 20 mile march. This means that you need to monitor whether the routines are being observed – is everyone consistently taking the agreed actions and inputting their own information? You also need to ensure that rituals are consistently observed – that the weekly meeting takes place every week at the same time regardless of who may be absent; that the meeting is short, lively and forward moving; that there is agreement on who will lead the meeting when you can’t be there.

It is also important to review the effectiveness of your rituals and routines every so often with your team. Here is a review agenda which you can modify to suit the situation:

1. What did we set out to achieve?
2. What did we actually achieve? What did we not achieve? What happened that we did not expect?
3. What worked?
4. What did not work?
5. What are the lessons to be learned?
6. What do we need to do now?

Those hours of walking gave me pause to think about 2020 and to review what happened and how effective I have been. My personal review is not the topic for this article. Believe me! It is a mixed bag! This is more about the art of the review.

I call it art in the same sense as my previous article "The Art of Conversation". A review is also a kind of conversation, even if you are doing a personal review. The best and most flexible process for a review is one I came across in a book called "On Being a Supervisee: Creating Learning Partnerships". The authors, Michael Carroll and Maria C. Gilbert, quote a review process used by the American military called the After Action Review - or AAR. After any military operation, small groups of soldiers gather with their commanders. The basic ground rules are that:
1. Nobody will be penalised in any way for anything they contribute to the discussion;
2. No blame or fault is acceptable.

The discussion has 6 questions:
1. What did we set out to do?
2. What happened?
3. What worked/went well?
4. What didn't work/went badly?
5. What have we learned?
6. What will we do differently next time?

These 6 questions can be used in slightly different wording across a wide range of situations. Here are some examples:

A. Project/Strategic Review
1. What were our goals?
2. What did we achieve? What actually happened?
3. What worked/went well?
4. What didn't?
5. What have we learned?
6. What do we need to do now?

B. Progress Review (on a Project or Strategy)
1. What are we trying to achieve?
2. What is actually happening? What progress have we made?
3. What have we done well?
4. What have we not done well?
5. What lessons must be learned?
6. What do we need to do now (to get things back on track)?

C. Personal Review
1. What were my goals for this year?
2. What have I achieved? (And what have I not achieved?)
3. What did I do well?
4. What did I not do well?
5. What have I learned?
6. What am I going to do now/What are my new goals?

D. Performance Review
No matter what the admin process is around formal performance reviews, the actual conversation is along the same lines:
1. What did you set out to achieve in the last x months?
2. What did you actually do?
3. What went well?
4. What did not go well?
5. What have you learned?
6. What do you want to do now? PLUS And how can I support you?

I have used this process in various contexts many many times and have never failed to be enthused by how inspiring and rewarding it has been for the participants. I love that the questions are asked in a way that does not brook blame or fault. When people know that the purpose of the review is to learn rather than to apportion blame, they are willing to be quite frank about their experiences - and this is how one creates a learning organisation. Simple! Not necessarily easy though.

Every team has what I like to call “vital signs” which the Manager of the team needs to keep an eye on every day. If we use our medical analogy, the nurse checks the vital signs of the patient in order to ascertain if there are any problems that might need attention. If the patient’s blood pressure, temperature or pulse rate are either too high or too low, these are indications that the doctor may need to obtain more information (perhaps in the form of tests) in order to diagnose and treat the problem.

So too does a team have vital signs. These are indicators that the team is doing what it should be doing in order to ensure that it delivers the results by which its performance is measured. The principle is as follows:
If the team does enough of the right things at the right time and in the right way, then it will achieve the results it seeks.

In the book “Great by Choice” (Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen) – which I highly recommend – the authors talk about the 20 Mile March. We live in an economic environment that is Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA), and one of the 3 habits that sets the outstanding performers apart from the businesses who fail or only just survive is that of “Obsessive Discipline”. This means that there is absolute clarity on what must be done in good times and in bad times. Achieving the daily 20 Mile March requires “hitting specific performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time.” These performance markers drive the results that the team is looking for.

Let me give you a really simple example from the world of truck sales to illustrate the point:
You have to see enough customers every day, in order to write enough quotations
every week, in order to sign up enough offers to purchase every month, in order to
deliver enough vehicles in order to achieve your monthly target.
So the vital signs in truck sales are:

• Customer contacts
• Quotations
• Offers to Purchase
• Deliveries

This means that on at least a weekly basis, a Sales Manager needs to actively monitor what is happening with each Sales Executive in order to know where and how to support them. If your Sales Executives are reaching or exceeding their targets, then they will need little from their Manager other than being available on request and checking in with them in a periodic one-on-one. However, if a Sales Executive is struggling, then looking at their vital signs will give you an indication of what support they need:

• Are they seeing enough prospects? If not, what will assist them to see more prospective buyers?
• Are they seeing enough prospects but not writing enough quotations? If so, how are they conducting their contact conversations and what can they do differently to increase the number of quotations they are asked for?
• Are they seeing enough prospects and submitting enough quotations, but still not getting enough signed Offers to Purchase? In which case, how can they improve their closing skills?
• And finally, are they getting enough signed Offers to Purchase, but still losing some of these sales? What might be happening that is getting in the way of Offers to Purchase resulting in Deliveries?

Tracking these vital signs closely and often with Sales Executives who are not achieving their targets puts their Sales Manager in a position to do some remedial coaching early on, resulting in greater success – which ultimately impacts on the overall success of the team.

I’ve used a commercial vehicle sales example because it provides really tangible drivers of performance – anyone can identify with these even if they are not in the same field.
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So think about your own area of the business:

1. What are the KPIs in your part of the business? These are the Output Goals.
2. For each KPI, identify the behaviours, actions or targets that comprise the Input Goals – that is, the achievement of the Input Goals is what will deliver the Output goals.
3. How can you track and monitor the Input Goals? Come up with some tentative ideas for a dashboard that focuses on the Input Goals.
4. For each of the Input Goals, identify what could be going wrong in the event that those goals are not tracking.

In the next article, I’ll write about how you could get the team on board so that they are excited about a Scoreboard – rather than resistant. You don’t want them to treat any of this as admin! So process is everything.

Leadership is exercised one conversation at a time. The video speaks more about my views on that. In this article, I share a specific conversation that all leaders should have.
Teams and their leader need to have explicit agreements about how they will work together. The term, Rules of Engagement, was originally a military term outlining the circumstances under which opposing forces might engage with each other. It has been extended to include intimate relationships, and their purpose is to create safety so that difficult topics and conflict can be addressed without fear because both partners agree to adhere to certain rules.
Rules of engagement (ROE) also create psychological safety in a team. The ROE outline how team members will deal with each other and with specific topics, and the purpose is to create clarity. Psychological safety is always prejudiced when team members don't know how things should be handled. It is further prejudiced when they (or the team leader) don't like the way things currently tend to be handled.
When you take on a new leadership role, this is a time for you and the team to discuss and reach agreement on how you will work together. If you were previously a member of the team and now you are the manager of that team, it is also an opportunity to talk frankly about the change to the relationship – “Yesterday I was one of you. Today I am your manager. Let’s talk about what that means.”
Rules of engagement would touch on such topics as:

• communication: what to communicate, how to communicate, meetings, sharing of information, etc.;
• decision-making: how decisions should be made, who should be involved, who has the final say, etc.;
• conflict: what does this team regard as conflict; how to we expect it to be handled; how robustly do we expect to debate issues; how do we intend to resolve conflict; what will we do if we get stuck; what do we share with the team.

This is not an exhaustive list. Furthermore, no matter how comprehensively you think you have covered the discussion, something you didn't think of will come up at a later time. This implies that Rules of Engagement is never a "once and done" discussion. Periodically, you will need to pick up the discussion again in order to find agreement on something new that hadn't been anticipated. Relationships are dynamic, so these topics need to be revisited as circumstances change.
Here is a starter agenda for such a discussion:

1. Meetings: How often shall we meet? What will we discuss? How will meetings be led and by whom? What preparation is required? What participation is expected? Whose responsibility is it to make sure our meetings stay on track?
2. What do we believe and expect regarding action items, deliverables and deadlines?
3. How will we make decisions? Do we favour consensus, majority rule or “managerial edict”?
4. How will we resolve conflict? At what stage do you want to be involved? What do you want to know about conflict that has been resolved without your input (if anything)?
5. What are the team’s views and expectations around timekeeping, working from home, taking personal time, leave, after hours contact, etc.?

Experiment with this. You will find it incredibly liberating for both you and the team to have some explicit boundaries that help you navigate some of the more tricky discussions.

The next article will deal with a different type of ROE conversation - that between a manager and a team member to agree on how they individually will work together.

We have all heard it said that “assumptions are the mother of all stuff ups” (or some variation of the same). Yet we all make assumptions every day. Making assumptions is necessary – it short-cuts many thought processes and human interactions that would otherwise be unnecessarily time-consuming. The types of assumptions we make are based on some core beliefs:

• Whether we believe the world is basically a safe place OR that the world is full of danger;
• Whether we believe that people are basically good and well-intentioned OR basically bad and self-serving;
• Whether we believe that we are deserving OR that we are not deserving.

Assumptions tend to be most problematic when they drive our most unhelpful behaviours. When we find ourselves triggered or upset by the behaviour of others, it is often as a result of the assumptions we have made – and often our assumptions are related to their intentions.

What happens is that we tell ourselves stories about what another person’s behaviour might mean -and sometimes these stories can be quite elaborate!

Let’s understand what an assumption is:
it is accepting as the truth a belief for which you have no proof.

Can you see how your choice of assumption is determined by the core beliefs I’ve listed above? If you believe that people are basically good and that the universe is basically supportive, your assumptions about other people and their intentions will tend to be either innocuous or generous. If you believe that people are basically bad, or that the universe is out to get you, your assumptions will be negative.

How can you tell when your reactions are being driven by your negative assumptions? The most common indicator for me is when a client uses the word “obviously” and then tells me something that they believe about another person’s intentions. That is a cue for me to ask “What is obvious about your interpretation”? You will know that your reactions are being driven by negative assumptions when you ruminate about a situation and the players in that situation.

Let me use an example:
You were recently appointed as head of your division. You presented your divisional budget in the executive meeting last week. In that meeting was a colleague who also applied for your position – unsuccessfully. She asked you some challenging questions about your budget that you were not prepared for, and you felt embarrassed. You have spent the last week ruminating about the fact that she intended to embarrass you; that she only asked these questions because her nose is out of joint for not being appointed. You need to present your budget again because her questions necessitated some rework. You are anxious that she will find some other way to make you look bad when you do so this afternoon.
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What aspects of the scenario I have described are facts, and which are assumptions for which you have no proof?

Once you have separated facts from assumptions, it is useful to remind yourself that, no matter how strongly you hold your assumptions, they are just beliefs for which you have no proof. They might be true but, then again, they might not. You have a few options for dealing with your negative assumptions:

1. You can do NOTHING and carry on getting yourself bent out of shape;
2. You can test your assumptions with the person about whom you are making assumptions. You could say to them “When you questioned my budget in the way that you did, I felt embarrassed. The story I told myself is that you were trying to make me look bad because I got the job that you wanted. Is that what was happening?” And then you will need to listen and have a constructive conversation.
3. You can remind yourself that you are probably telling yourself a story, and then you can attribute more generous assumptions to your colleague: she has the interests of the business at heart; she was sincere in asking those questions and she was right because I hadn’t thought about those things; she has always been a good colleague and I don’t see any reason why that would change.

Option 1 is a bit of a loser’s game – it is a choice to be the victim of your story. Option 2 is great, but might turn out to be a completely unnecessary conversation – which you may find out if you just exercise Option 3. While there is no proof of the more positive and generous assumptions I’ve offered in 3 above, they simply lead to more productive engagements with your colleague than the original negative assumptions. Just assuming the best of people leads to positive outcomes (even if they themselves were not being as generous in their behaviour as you have assumed).

The way to test your assumptions is to ask yourself the following:

1. Is it logical based on what you know about yourself, the other person or the situation?
2. Is it a fact? Do you have evidence for it?
3. Is it based on a positive philosophical choice? Positive philosophical choices are that the universe is supportive, people are basically good, and you are deserving of all good.

If your assumption is not logical (makes no sense), change it to an assumption that does make sense. If you have no evidence for your assumption, replace it with a positive assumption. If your assumption is based on a negative philosophical choice, replace it with something that is based on a positive philosophical choice.

The key to any change starts with self-awareness. Pay attention to yourself when you get upset or triggered. Are you telling yourself a story based on negative assumptions? If so, the attached downloadable document will take you through a process that will enable you to test your negative assumptions and replace them with more constructive and positive assumptions that not only make you feel happier, but also foster productive engagements with your colleagues, family and friends.
 
The pdf below will take you through a guided process of testing your unhelpful assumptions. Give it a try!
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Reference:
Kline, Nancy. Time to Think. Octopus Books. United Kingdom. 1999

Effective working relationships have a great deal to do with mutual understanding - life is so much easier when we understand what makes our boss or our colleagues tick. If you are in a leadership role, it is easy to underestimate the amount of headspace you occupy on the part of your team members. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out how to approach you interpreting what your behaviour might mean - and all of these machinations are based on assumptions.

Some years ago I came across the notion of compiling a personal user manual as a way of making everyone's life  whole lot easier. It is a great self-reflection exercise too, as you think about how to complete each aspect of the manual. Here is what might go into your User Manual:

1. My Style: here you can talk about the kind of person you are; your personality style; your leadership style; how formal or informal you like things.
2. What I Value: you can talk about your values; what you appreciate in others; your views on the work/life balance question.
3. What I Don't Have Patience For: these might be things that irritate or annoy you; it could be about behaviour you regard as childish; taboos that apply in your life.
4. How to Communicate with Me: What do you like people to lead with; do you want detail or just the headlines; do you want a heads-up before a discussion; do you like conversation or do you prefer to read something; do you want background or should people get to the point. It may also include your approach to decision-making: what do you expect from your team members; when do you want to be involved; how you make decisions yourself. If you are aware of not being a great listener, you can also tell team members how to bring to your attention that you need to LISTEN.
5. How You Can Help Me: this might include what team members can do to make your life easier; your own weaknesses and how team members can complement you on these; what team members can do to make their own lives easier in terms of working with you.
6. What People Misunderstand About Me: these are the quirks and foibles that people think mean one thing but actually mean another.

You can mess around with these headings and come up with something that is more you - they offer you a starting point.

It can be a really fun exercise to encourage your team members to prepare their own User Manuals, and then for the team to have a series of conversations that makes each of you a whole lot more knowable. You could use a process like this:

1. Tell your team that you want to have a session where you can each get to know and understand one another better, and agree on a date and time. This will take a couple of hours, so maybe arrange an afternoon where you can all be relaxed and take your time.
2. Share the template (see below) with them and discuss what might go under each heading. Modify the headings if it seems appropriate to do so.
3. As the team leader, you go first. You could present your user manual as a document or as a video, or you could simply speak to each heading and then share your document afterwards.
4. Invite team members to ask any questions that may not have been addressed in your user manual. Answer them and then perhaps add some FAQs to your user manual, which you can then share.
5. Give each team member the opportunity to present their own user manuals, and answer any questions including questions from you.
6. End with each person having the opportunity to offer their personal reflection on any important insights they have gained and the benefits of the conversation. (I'm a big fan of end-of-meeting reflections.)

I facilitated such a discussion with a team that really wasn't clicking - and the misconceptions and inaccurate assumptions that were set straight was unbelievable. It is a great way to start off your time with a new team. It is also a great way to integrate new team members. It is also a useful tool to use when you are some way along your journey with your team and, perhaps you have a sense that you do not understand each other as well as you need to.
Have fun with it. Laugh at yourself and invite others to do so too. Notice when your colleagues deal with you in the way you have outlined. Be aware of doing the same for them. A couple of weeks later, have another reflection with your team - what is working, what has improved, what still needs to change?
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​Here is a template that you are welcome to use.

I have huge compassion for really good managers who take over the leadership of a team from a “manager from hell”. You know the person I mean – he is aggressive and rude; he gets off on humiliating people; he uses threats to get what he wants; he uses gaslighting to manipulate people; and he has left behind him a team that is anxious and has gotten into the habit of making fear-based decisions. So now this chapter is behind them – thank goodness! And a new manager, with great people skills, has been brought in to rebuild the team and turn things around.

It is enormously frustrating when you are a leader who has a genuine open door policy, who genuinely wants people to make decisions, and who genuinely wants people to take the initiative, to receive feedback that his or her people are not doing these things because they still fear the consequences.

Fear is an insidious thing. It is easy to instil and difficult to dispel. It is just not enough for a leader to be an all-round good person. It is just not enough for a leader to know that he or she did not create the fear. The challenge to the new leader is to deliberately create an environment in which fear becomes a thing of the past, everyone has gotten over it and people are taking decisions and risks that are appropriate to their level of responsibility and authority.

I had a client who was battling with the residue of fear that was created more than four years ago – and people were still behaving as though the cause of the fear were present! It was as though fear had been woven into the very fabric of the business. The challenge to the current leadership was to create something different, and this cannot be done through good intentions alone.

So what would it take?
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1. The entire team needs to be on board. Let’s assume that you lead the management team of a business – they all need to be committed to creating a high-performance, empowering, fear-free environment. The best way to do this is to workshop the following:
a. What is the current truth about the climate in this team/business? Get into detail. Drag all the dirty laundry out into the open. Name the elephants in the living room. Also identify what is good about the current truth because you don’t want to lose that.
b. How do we want things to be? Describe the climate, the relationships, how people will work, how people will make decisions, how people will innovate and initiate change.
c. What is creating the gap between the current truth and how we want things to be?
d. What do we (as leaders) need to change or do differently in order to realise our desired situation?
e. How (and how often) will we review our progress? 

If you are the manager of a team of non-managers, the same process applies – the team is reaching agreement on how we will do things around here, and you are receiving input on how your team would like to be managed in order to bring out their best.

2. Ensure that your plan of action (d above) addresses the following:

1. How will we clarify the parameters within which people at each level should be making decisions? What decisions should be made at what levels?
2. How will we develop the decision-making skills of team members? Will we provide training? Coaching? Some combination of the two?
3. How will we handle it if a team member takes the initiative or takes a decision and it is a mistake? How will we resolve the mistake? How will we support the team member? How will we make it safe for the team member to make decisions/take the initiative in future even though a mistake has been made on this occasion?
4. How will we create the habit of having learning conversations in which we review our performance? The After Action Review (AAR) is a useful format:
   1. What did we set out to do/achieve?
   2. What actually happened?
   3. What worked well?
   4. What didn’t work well?
   5. What have we learned?
   6. What will we do/change going forward/in future?
      
      ​It is helpful if you make one of your own gaffs the subject of the first AAR as it demonstrates to the team that you are fallible and that you are not afraid to hold your own actions up to scrutiny. This will show the team that if you are not afraid there is no reason for them to be afraid.
5. When team members bring a decision to a manager, how will that manager coach the team member so that, ultimately, the team member makes the decision and learns in the process?
6. How will we give recognition to people when they take the initiative or decisions that they were previously reluctant to take? Will we acknowledge this publicly? Will we send an email acknowledging it? Will we make a point of going to their desk to acknowledge them?
7. How will we handle it when a manager is taking decisions that should be taken at the level below him/her? Will we remind him to push the decision back down? Will we hold her accountable for empowering her team members?
8. Take every opportunity to demonstrate that you are as good as your word:
   1. Ensure that your responses are controlled and supportive when people mess up – and they will.
   2. Don’t be afraid to hold your own mistakes up to scrutiny – it makes it safer for everyone else to do so.
   3. Defend your team from outside criticism.
   4. Share praise with your team and celebrate success.
9. Make your workplace a fun place to be. Make laughter a feature of your environment. People think better when they laugh. They enjoy themselves when they laugh. People work harder when they are having fun and are more inclined to put in extra effort. People who are having fun are not paralysed by fear – they are energised.