How do you tell an employee they need to improve?

First, ditch the “they need to” language. That makes people defensive. In fact, most second person language makes people defensive. (“You need to …” “You have a problem.. “ )

Second, own your problem. Most managers, oddly IME, cannot define what a problem is. I say, a problem is a Want-Got Gap for Somebody.” Who’s got the Want-Got Gap? Clearly it’s you, not them. See chart below. This recognition sets up a good way (clearly not the only way) to address employee performance. YOUR problem is you want your employee to do something they are not. I’ve encountered this endlessly in my consulting practice and teaching. Even written cases about it. One student working as a manager in a women’s spa and had an employee who had bad body odor. ! Yes, I know.

Third, choose a time when neither of you are busy.

Fourth, I encourage you to role play this in your head and out loud many times in the shower, driving, walking wherever. Role Playing in advance helps you a) find the words and b) imagine various responses to which you can prepare reactions.

Fifth, recognize that most behavior is based in VABEs and is habitual—that is, mindlessly repetitive.

Sixth, try this structure.

1. Thank you for meeting with me. I have a little problem.
2. I want to present to the world a company that does A, B, C.
3. I observe that from my vantage point, your behavior (not YOU) doesn’t match up to A B C. Dress, hair, body odor, performance, tardiness, leaving early, not cleaning up, whatever.
4. I want you to succeed and excel in this company and to be happy about working here.
5. IF that’s to happen, from my point of view, I want you to do X. I understand that you might not want to do that.
6. Will you do X?
7. Would you like to comment on my request? Do you think I’m being unfair? If so, why?
8. Listen.
9. In the end, I still want you to do this.
10. May I add another thought? Success at any job is a result of goodness of fit. Think of yourself as a “hand” and the demands of a job as a “glove.” If the hand doesn’t fit the glove, it won’t be able to do it’s best work. You might enjoy reading more about the “goodness-of-fit” idea at the Career Management part of this website: Level Three Leadership where there are a number of self-assessment tools and other guidance about findingFIT in your career choices. In this job and in any you take in the future, in order to enjoy your work and to be good at it, one must find a good fit between self and job.
11. No, this is not a threat to change or else. It’s an invitation, an invitation based on what I want from you in your work here. If you don’t want to make the change, you might be happier working someplace else where there’s a better fit. I’m not making that decision now.
12. We all spend large parts of our lives at work. I think it’s important to be happy and successful at work. I want that for you. For it to happen here, I want associates who do X.

In this conversation you will gain insight into a person’s IQ, EQ, SQ, and CQ. Their response to the fit issue will reflect how broadly they can think about their life and work. Their emotional response will reflect something about their EQ or Emotional Intelligence. Can they manage constructive feedback? It will also reveal something about their SQ or Social Quotient, their willingness to work with Others and their Expectations. Finally, you will learn about their CQ or Change Quotient. Most people are creatures of habit. The few who are willing acknowledge and adapt are more likely to succeed in the world.

“Bad Attitudes” are hard to change. The bad apple can create rot in the barrel …. “I want you to be happy at work. I observe you complaining frequently (not always) and this bothers me. If you have a helpful suggestion for how to improve our company, I’m all ears. If you just like to complain without thinking of a better way to do things, then I have a real problem with that. Energy and Attitude are contagious. If you don’t enjoy working here, I’d prefer that you find something more to your liking. I want to work around cheerful, positive people.”

Finally, you may want to review your hiring system. Apparently you have a selection and on-boarding/orientation process that let this person “through.” Can you screen better in the future?

Oh, one more thought: I wrote a case, The Aberdeen Experiment, and learned a lot from it about creating company culture. In it, the founder had all employees go through NINE days of training on how to talk with each other—to give feedback, to avoid accusatory language, and so on because FEAR is created not just by management but also by peers. Peer pressure. If everyone you hire is rowing in the same direction with clarity of purpose and vision—(yes/no?) — the bad apples usually don’t feel a good fit and leave.

Good luck.

How can one change a culture--or do they end up compromising or leaving?

Profound question. New babies get two big "gifts:" a set of genes and a set of VABEs  that begin to be imprinted on them, deeply, from ages 0 to 6-10. (Depending on the developmental psychologists that you read.) We can think of genetics as our "hardware," early childhood programming as our "firmware," and adult thinking as our "software." The simple test is this: If we had been born in a different region of the world would our worldview be different? Of course, and dramatically so.

I surveyed informally all the participants in my worldwide seminars on every continent except Antarctica about degrees of human habituality, mindless repetitions. At Level One Visible Behavior the average answer was 75%. At Level Two the way people think the average answer was 85%. At Level Three VABEs the average answer was 95%+ usually 100%. If these perceptions of managers worldwide are even modestly accurate, humans tend to be LARGELY creatures of habit.

This is true even among the scientific community. Consider deductive vs inductive logic. Deduction begins with a conclusion and searches for data that fits or forces data to fit. Induction begins with data and infers patterns and conclusions. The vast majority of people think deductively based on their childhood VABEs. Kahneman got a Nobel Prize for identifying this phenomenon, something we in LOB understood long since. In short, VABEs trump data. (Pun intended) People make serious decisions based on their VABEs. See for example, Fast Thinking, Slow Thinking by Kahneman and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. In the latter, the scientists who looked for data to fit their VABEs literally had to die off before the new paradigm (sun vs earth revolving and Newton vs Einstein) was broadly accepted. Creatures of habit.

Having lived deeply in that deductive world for 48 years, I had a mid-life crisis and started over again with "data first." I concluded as does Csikszentmihalyi in The Evolving Self that the vast majority of people live and die simply perpetuating their genes and VABEs, passing the last generation on to the next. Look at Northern Ireland. Central Africa (Ruanda and Burundi, Hutu's and Tutsi's.) India/Pakistan. Croatia/Serbia. China/Tibet. Pick your favorite place. Charlottesville even.

Culture is a set of shared VABEs. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. (Ford Motor Company) People who live "outside-in" allow their surrounding cultures to guide them--what's okay, what's not? We all need to "fit in" to some extent. We conform because of the fear of rejection. A small minority of people live "inside-out" asserting their point of view on the culture around them. The vast majority simply replicate like viral shells. The #1 question in life is IMO: "will you ever be anything more than a viral shell transmitting the genes and VABEs of previous generations on to the next?" In my informal surveys, that few is about 0-25% only. I believe true leaders live about 75% inside-out, not outside-in in the main. Egocentric narcissists are more like 90%+ inside-out.  

Changing VABEs is very difficult. People CAN change AND the odds are low. Change is NOT easy. I went to the brink of death before becoming willing to change my core VABEs. I see worldwide BILLIONS of people who believe deeply in the mountains of mythological rubbish represented in the world's major scriptures -- all of which I have read. These documents are full of imagined answers to "mysterious" phenomena that people at the time did not understand.  

Seeing Larry Sabato taking on the Constitution in his book 23 Ways to Improve the Constitution emboldened me. So I wrote after retiring A Song of Humanity: a Science-Based Alternative to the World's Scriptures "simply" to provide an alternative to those millennia of compiled mythological answers to phenomena earlier humans did not understand. Presumptuous yes. AND I wish every child worldwide would read it. 

What do we know about the world from an INDUCTIVE point of view rather than a DEDUCTIVE point of view as taught us when we were defenseless children? I encourage people to live more inside-out and less outside-in. Executives manage their cultures whether they realize it or not. We all "represent" our cultures even mindlessly and habitually. In the end, it's all about VABEs.

SOME organizations include a VABE about reviewing and examining their VABEs.  One can have an influence on this kind of organization.  And if "reviewing our VABEs and changing to adapt to the world around us" is NOT a part of an organization's culture, the odds of one person changing it are very low. 

Some ways that one can affect an existing culture include:   

1. Identifying the existing VABEs and bringing the dysfunctional ones to people's attention.  See Ed Schein's work in Leadership and Organizational Culture.
2. Hiring different people--slow process and has an impact over decades.
3. Challenging the VABEs of senior managers.  If they are open to it, great, if not, your chicken head just got cut off.  Pioneers also get a lot of arrows in their chests.  
4. Historically, unions provided some protection from exploitation.  They became their own form of authoritarian abuse.  
5. Organizing peaceful demonstrations to bring the dysfunctional VABEs to light. Best examples of course are Gandhi and King.  
6. Demonstrating the cost of ignoring the dysfunctional VABEs.
7. Highlighting the dysfunctional VABEs to the HR department.  HR in Japan has a big influence; HR influence in the US varies widely.
8. Whistleblowing is another avenue and in resistant-to-change cultures, a dangerous one.

Becoming aware of a culture (identifying its dominant VABEs), managing a culture, and leading a culture are vital aspects of modern executive management.  Many executives still resist or ignore this responsibility often because they subscribe to the "maximize profits" VABE.  

IMO, the maximize profits VABE is a derelict and immoral one--because historically that motive has caused businesses to abuse the Commons--the things we share namely air, water, soil, flora, fauna, and underprivileged Others. I much prefer a core principle of "maximizing sustainable profits" meaning that businesses manage in a way to protect the Commons rather than abuse it.  The world is so interconnected now that we ignore the impact of the profit maximization VABE at our own peril. Sadly, throughout history, Homo Sapiens tend to take a short-term view and abuse the Commons until it collapses around us.  

In the end, it's all about VABEs.  And managing the collections of shared VABEs, cultures, remains a central and critical task for every person and especially every executive.  

How can one challenge and improve their teaching style?

I’m very happy to see your question. I don’t know what level you are teaching at, however, unless teachers at any level question their effectiveness, the quality of the classroom experience will not improve. Good for you.

Most PhD programs don’t have formal instruction in adult learning and learning facilitation (teaching). Mine did and I’m forever grateful. And ended up teaching that class later, throughout my career.

First, we’ve learned a lot about how adults learn. See for example, Ken Bain’s book What the Best College Teachers Do. In essence, adults learn best when they are actively involved discussing issues that mean something to them and when they believe they can and want to understand.

In that regard, lectures have several disadvantages. They are unilateral, one-way communication from instructor to student(s). Second, they tend to bore students. Third, they tend to disavow that students can read (textbooks). Fourth, instructors tend to focus on “covering their material” rather than on what’s being learned (until exam time a month or more later). Fifth, instructors are often evaluated on their research and not their teaching.

I got my doctorate at Harvard Business School where case method was king. The core philosophy of case method includes the idea that “wisdom can’t be told”—the title of an article we read on day one. So, one is facilitating learning, not teaching per se. Students read theory chapters or “technical notes” and then cases, descriptions of current, real, not made-up, business problems. In class, the instructor’s role is to ask good questions, gently guiding the discussion through important topical arenas at the STUDENTS’ PACE, not the instructor’s. Students talk more than the instructor. We would spend eight hours in a team of nine discussing how to “teach” or unveil each case. Most instructors aren’t that into how they teach. We were/are.

We watched the ratio of teacher talk to student talk. If we were talking too much, student engagement would drop. We watched the energy level in the room. I always wanted to create a “magic bubble” in the room where everyone was completely engaged in what was going on. Creating that required multiple techniques, multiple channels, and orchestrating all of that seamlessly. Any speed bump or mistake disrupted the flow, the “zone”, the resonance in the room.

I wrote a book with my colleague on all of this, Teaching Management. I’ve also outlined it with text and videos on my website, Level Three Leadership

In the end, the thing I loved most about what was for me a wonderful career was those classes, fully engaged with everyone intent on the magic bubble in the room.

I hope this helps somewhat. Your question implies a complete review of your VABEs about teaching. And gradually, shifting from teaching stuff to facilitating learning for people. 

Have core leadership values been declining recently?

IMO, effective, functional leadership VABEs and behaviors are enduring. Whether people and current “authoritors” (people in positions of authority are not necessarily “leaders”, they are just in a job that people call leadership) are more or less aware of and using those VABEs and principles of behavior is open for debate. Consider some thoughts:

1. Zimbardo’s prison studies at Stanford showed that randomly chosen people given authority will likely begin very quickly to abuse that authority.
   
   
2. Most people, IMO, in national elections vote on one or two key issues for them, issues like abortion, immigration, and budget management (even though no difference on that one between the parties).
   
   
3. Leadership is about managing energy, first in yourself and THEN in those around you. See Level Three Leadership People can be effective at getting others to rally even if they are incompetent. People are susceptible to superficial “charisma.” Energy, positive and negative, is contagious.
   
   
4. Depending on what you want to influence, Behavior (Level One), Thoughts (Level Two) or VABEs (Level Three), there are different influence techniques. Again see L3L above. Rewards and punishments are superficial behavioral techniques (see BF Skinner). What inspires people is Clarity of Purpose and Clarity of Vision. What are we doing here and where are we going?
   
   
5. Trust is a function of three things: Competence, Consistency and Caring. If any one of those three legs is missing, trustworthiness topples.
   
   
6. Few people have all three skill sets of effective executives: Vision, Ability to Sell Vision, and Ability to manage progress toward the Vision. See Survey of Managerial Style.

So, are “core leadership values” declining? No. Are the incumbents in some key positions LACKING in those core values? Yes. Effective, functional leadership hasn’t changed. Many authoritors don’t understand them or use them.  

How Can I Develop an Employee's Leadership Skills?

FIRST, ask the person what they want. They may not know. EVERY student in my executive education seminars worldwide has seen good employees ruined by promotion into management. It’s not what YOU want. Most people promoted into management were good Independent Contributors/Experts. Excellent doing, however, does not equate to excellent managing. Different skill sets. Most people in my experience accept, without thinking, society’s definition of success—to move up the ladder. That’s a big mistake. Until a person understands deep down who they are and what they want in life, they tend to live "outside-in" rather than "inside-out" -- which is what leaders must do.  

Consider the Career Concepts developed by Driver and Brousseau at USC (CA). Here’s a gratis survey to help one understand four different definitions of success and likelihood of success. Career Concepts Survey

If you take that survey and ask your employee to do the same you can have a better informed conversation about what it means to make the jump from Expert to Linear roles. You may also find The Four Stages of Professional Development article useful. Similar, converging, concepts from USC and HBS.

I found in my worldwide consulting that although this is not new research, most HR and C-level executives were unaware of it, to their dysfunction. I wish every HR and C-level manager/executive would understand this and stop trying to force Experts into MGT and by that ruining them and their departments. Stories to tell, no space here. One short one to your question: a man in South Africa asked why his manager wouldn’t listen to him. He wanted to go X and his boss kept saying, “Stop talking about X, I have other plans in mind for you.” The man was totally demotivated.

“Leadership is about managing energy, first in yourself and then in others.” (See Level Three Leadership ) What too many managers do is unintendedly demotivate their employees—by assuming their own perspective, their VABEs are the “correct” ones. The core VABE of Experts is something like “if you want it done right, do it yourself.” The core VABE of Linears is something like “it’s deeply satisfying to get other people to do what needs to be done.”

Best wishes. IF the employee has the desire and the willingness to let go of their Expert skill set and to acquire a different skill set, then you can begin to organize their education.