Please find a transcription of the audio portion of James Roger’s Performance Based Power Skills webinar being provided by MPUG for the convenience of our members. You may wish to use this transcript for the purposes of self-paced learning, searching for specific information, and/or performing a quick review of webinar content. There may be exclusions such as those steps included in product demonstrations. Watch the complete webinar on-demand at your convenience.

Performance Based Power Skills
Posted: 12/5/18
Presenter: James Rogers
Moderator: Kyle

02:23 – Slide 1 (Introduction): Because Project Managers need to be able to lead the team to achieve results on time and on budget. Quite often it’s the case that your team members might not have worked together before. And even if they have, by definition they’re doing a project that’s new and they may still prioritize their regular jobs and you need them to work on your Project. So it’s particularly important that the PM knows how to get people to do what needs to be done and often under pressure and the techniques in this performance based leadership presentation will help. Kyle mentioned a couple of things, very kind words. I have an MBA and a PMP. I always run projects keeping business value in mind. I was experienced establishing a PMO in IT, construction, process improvement, ISO standards for both commercial and federal clients.

03:28 – Slide 2 (Edwards Performance Solutions): And to introduce the company…so you see that we’ve been around for a while, founded in ’97. Woman Owned Small Business (WOSB), Certified Maryland Minority Business (MBE), CMMI Level 3, ISO 9000 quality…it’s an ethical and competent company to work with yours, it’s a great place to work. You see that we have for the Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist. We also work in enterprise management, learning and development…IT services and cyber security. You see that we are a Microsoft partner.

04:12 – Slide 3 (PBL Topics): Quite a few topics to cover. We’re going to talk about what Performance Based Power Skills is, PBL. And why use PBL, what do you need to know about Performance Based Power Skills? From the PM’s perspective, soon we’re going to discuss discretionary effort, ABC and DCOM and then we’re going to look at some specific techniques which you can use. So NORMS, how to measure, SBIR, consequences and then we’ll discuss some general PM leadership skills. We only have time to lightly cover these few techniques so it’s not really training, it’s an introduction. It’s high level but I hope that you’ll be interested in them and find out more.

05:24 – Slide 4 (Why PMs need to know PBL): So it’s a balance between specific techniques that you’ve actually used and later we’ll see some high level concepts. But first [I’ll] emphasize what you’ll need to know about Performance Based Power Skills even if you’re not Project Manager. So this what PMs need to know but even if you’re not PM, you should also know about these techniques because as a member of a team, you may see when these techniques are being used or when they’re needed so being educated about this is always a good idea whether you’re a PM or not.

06:03 – Slide 5 (Discretionary Effort): A massive difference between compliance and performance. So you see the little graph there shows what you have to do, the minimum required so you’re complying. Behavior: what you say and do. But that’s what you have to do. And if you want to do something, we all know that you can do more. So the question is, as a leader, how are you able to get people to perform, where can you get that additional discretionary effort from? So you’ll have to comply with the requirements of the job. People are probably doing at least that. Minimum compliance based behavior tends to be the result of managers relying heavily on threats and punishment when telling people what to do. Could be that, could be their authority, their position. “I’m the manger so you have to do this.” And some people will but compliance based performance is kind of an enemy. Most people are capable of doing more, the leaders inspire them to want to. And not just a bit more. Research has shown that the untapped potential may vary from 30% which is already quite a bit and maybe two or three times what they’re currently doing. Their time and attention when they’re actually on the job as well as how they’re talking to their colleagues. Are they just not “working, working”? If you can really get them to work for you, they can really boost up performance tremendously. And if you think about the most satisfying jobs that you’ve done, or managers that you’ve worked for, I know for myself there’s times in my working life not having an easy time at work but a challenging one. Come in to work, looking forward to the day often working hard to do something difficult.  Choosing to stay late and thinking about the project during off hours. The difference in the behavior and the resulting performance can be tremendous. You may get better quality, faster results, costs savings. So the boost in that behavior in what you say and do may manifest itself in different ways but always that beneficial side of things whether it’s quality of results or savings in time as well as money. This is what we’re aiming for, that boost in PBL.

08:49 – Slide 6 (ABC): So here we’re talking about Antecedent, Behavior and Consequences. So antecedents are that things that come before somebodies behavior and that’s what most managers focus on. Typically includes things like training, standard operating procedures, policies, job aids, prompt reminders/instructions, individual abilities, plans/goals. The fact that I can read off a long, long list of things that people do shows that there is a great deal of management focus on the antecedent, that you’ve prepared, you’ve planned and you think you’re getting people ready to work. Those have been shown in traditional workplace environments to be about 80% of what managers do to get their workers to do the jobs. However, antecedent is only about 20% effective. Managers who are focusing on antecedents are trying to boost performance but the effectiveness and what they’re focusing on is kind of flip-flopped. The behavior is then the things you say and do and that’s what you want to influence. And the “C” (referencing the slide) are the consequences after you’ve done something. If you get positive consequences or even negative ones after you’ve done something, it’s a much bigger effect on the behavior. 80% of what we say and do is influenced by the consequences of our behavior. Managers should still provide the required working environment so it’s necessary but it’s not sufficient. They should focus on consequences. So things such as giving feedback like “good job for a task well done” or something tangible like clocks or t-shirts or formal recognition also show the person that their job became easier. Sometimes they do something and it may make the job easier and just pointing out “Hey, that word process you did” makes your job easier. So that’s a consequence of them doing something that you desire so you can point that out. You obviously can’t everyone something as big or costly as a promotion or a raise for every bit of extra effort but something intangible like a “thank you” or maybe something tangible like a month’s preferred parking spot goes a very, very long way into encouraging that desired behavior. If you connect a reward to extra effort, it goes a long way. So we’re not talking about raises and promotions and so forth as a consequence, just a “thank you”. There was a caveat in there, what I said. I said managers should still give feedback saying “good job for a task well done”. You can’t just go around saying “hey, well done” to everybody. You have to connect it to the behavior that you saw. So that makes it important that managers do in fact observe the behavior and then say well done so the recipient says “wow, my manager was paying attention and that’s when I got the reward”. The connection has to be there.

12:33 – Slide 7 (DCOM): Direction, competence, opportunity and motivation. And you see I’ve put ABC there as well. So the antecedent, behavior and consequence occurs between direction, competence and opportunity and then motivation so you want to lead people to be motivated. To change and improve their behavior. While we look at this grid, you can see that if we have “yes” to direction, competence, opportunity and motivation, the result will be that you have a high performing team. Motivated and they can do it and they know what they’re going to be doing. That’s really tremendous. And the antecedents of direction which is when you tell people what to do clearly and completely and make sure that the organizations vision, mission and values are understood and aligned. Competence, you select people who have the knowledge and skills. Technical work, time management, interpersonal and financial skills. And offer training where necessary, they don’t necessarily have to have every skill. As we know, we can train people if we need to. Make sure the project is within the organizations capabilities as well. Opportunity, make sure that people have the materials. Time, machines etc. that they need. Clearing these roadblocks is the key of the job. So then behavior is what people do and the consequences will provide the motivation. If they’re not self motivated, make sure you’ve got some techniques to improve things as well. If you’re missing something, if you don’t have good direction but you have competence that’s offering you motivation, you’ll know that the team becomes confused because they don’t know what they’re doing. If they lack competence, you’re going to get low quality and put your whole project at risk because they’re not doing the necessary work for the project. If they don’t have the opportunity to do something, so they’re missing things like the time, log-in permissions, materials etc., they’ll get very frustrated because they want to do a good job, they’re motivated but you’ve told them what to do and they can’t do it. Missing opportunity to do it, not having the time, being pulled off in another direction, working on other projects, working on their regular job. Very frustrating. And then again, if they’re not motivated, they’ll have lethargy. The nice thing about this chart is that you can this backwards so if you find that you are feeling frustrated, team is frustrated, you can stop, look at the opportunity problem. If people are confused or if you feel confused, you can say “hey, was I right?”. It’s a great little tool. I encourage you to understand the DCOM concept.

16:23 – Slide 8 (Opportunity): So a little bit more about opportunity because it’s important. Opportunity is all about having the circumstances to be able to do the work. How frustrating is it to be told to manage a project but not being permitted to see the data being made. That’s definitely happened to me before. They’d say “hey, analyze this” or “do that” and all of a sudden you discover there’s a share-point site or a shared drive you didn’t even know about or there’s a database you weren’t aware of and not having that can be very, very frustrating. Or if you don’t have the time to do something. You’re given a task or your project was given a task to change managements and you were added more additional scope but nothing else got taken away, more results were added. The opportunity do something is very important. Having a list here, it’s not supposed to be a complete list but you can use this as a checklist to make sure that you have provided your team with the opportunity or if you’re a team member, think about it in terms of time, materials and tools. Work process: are you all working in the same way? Authority: hiring, purchasing, permissions and security clearances. What information do you need, what have you got, money and other resources. If you think about opportunity and this kind of list, you can really help to focus on the thing that’s important to get in your project.

18:29 – Slide 9 (Techniques): these are techniques you can actually use. There are many things to consider. Lots and lots of techniques I’m going to go through. There’s five of them.

18:47 – Slide10 (Pinpoint: Observing Behavior Objectively): We talked about observing behavior. Behavior is something people say or do so you’ve got to be able to obverse it. You can use this NORMS technique. You focus your attention on what it is you’re seeing. You can’t see someone getting angry but you can see somebody raising their voice. For instance, you can observe that. You can’t say you’re ignoring me or you’re not interested, tempting as it is to describe a reason but it’s a lot more powerful to say “I’ve noticed that you’ve looked at your phone six times in the past five minutes”. So that’s observable, ignoring something you’re not interested in is not. It has to be an observable behavior somebody is saying or doing. There’s a vast difference between the two statements. I’ll give you an example here. The subjective  says “I heard you are always late”. Objective would say “Twice this week I saw you arrived twenty minutes after the nine a.m. start time”. So one is very weak, one is very powerful. So you always want to make sure you follow this approach. “Not an opinion” and “observable” are two sides of the same coin. Can you observe someone who does not care about the project? No, you can’t. Can you observe someone is late? Yes you can and if you quantify it and say “twice this week you were 30 minutes late after the 9 a.m. start time” there’s no argument, there’s no “wiggle” room. And the person understands “yup, he really did observe me”. Reliable. That has two components. You would record and give the same observation as someone else who records and gives an observation. So if you saw somebody arrive late, another person would be able to observe that as well. That’s a reliable observation. Measurable emphasizes counting rather than saying things like “always” or “doesn’t care”. I’m going to mention a little bit about measurement in the next slide. Again, if you’ve observed it and it’s measurable, it’s “twice”, it’s “twenty minutes”, it’s something you can count. Specific. Pinpoints what this particular observation is about. So you don’t say “bad time management”, you say “you’re late” specifically like that. So keeping things NORMS based really helps.

21:52 – Slide 11 (Measure): Measuring: you’re going to track worker behavior and the results. How people got the results is important. Still have to be ethical and not running with scissors, that kind of thing. You’ve got to make sure people got results not by cheating, not by short padding. Team’s performance and the effect of your leadership. You can say to yourself “since I introduced this, the team did in fact get better” or maybe “since I introduced something or stopped doing something maybe it got worse”. So you have to be self aware as well. And you want to track a person’s behavior and the results that happen so if a person is twenty minutes late, what effect did that have on the team? Were the rest of her/his colleagues able to work? Did that delay everybody? You want to be able to track and measure that and say so. You want to be able to show trends over time and that can establish a baseline, maybe you already have one show the trend over time against the baseline. Enables you to give feedback which is the basis for reinforcing measured improvements. It can be simple metrics, can be a simple graph or…this is the Microsoft Projects User Group so it’s pertinent to mention that MS Project is rich and can show as much as Earned Value Management. For the whole project, you can show “with scope”, cost and schedule in that EVM. So measuring is really important. Kelvin said that “when you can measure what you’re speaking about and express it in numbers, you know something about it”. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. This is good for individuals as well as teams and for behavioral reinforcement. You can coach them, set a baseline and then reward your team as you observe specific trends and results.

24:05 – Slide 12 (Pinpoint: Feedback): So when you have give that feedback, you want to pinpoint what you’re talking about. So pinpointing using SBIR: you speak to the person and describe the situation in which the behavior occurred, describe the behavior in which you’re giving feedback, describe the impact of the behavior on you, the team, the business etc. and request the future behavior. This is not just negative. People often think of giving feedback as being a negative thing. You’ll see through the rest of this webinar, that actually giving positive reinforcement is really important. You should do it the same way, the situation in which behavior occurred, the behavior for which you’re providing feedback and request future behavior. SBIR is a way of remembering that. When you do this at first, it seems wooden but like everything else, with practice you get better and you’ll work out some sentences that just flow naturally. Like sleeping late. “I noticed you were twenty minutes late this week passed the start time and this had the effect on the team that they were late, you need to start on time”. It flows reasonably naturally and covers all bases. The person will listen to you much better if you present things in that way. It also helps to show that you’ve thought about it, you’re prepared and you’ll have a less defensive and more constructive conversation if its negative. And if it’s positive, again it not just shows “hey, good job” but “hey good job, I saw you early twice this week” which meant you were ready to go and were prepared when the team arrived and you can set them off going. This can be for feedback, positive or negative. Always remember that behavior that needs improving, you should always have those conversations in private. they say praise in public, punish in private.

26:49 – Slide 13 (Consequences: PIC): Feedback, positive or negative is always from the perspective of the recipient so that’s really important. Some people like to be called out for praise in front of the public, some shrink away. For some managers, that’s more work for you, you have to know your people. You can’t just automatically say “hey, well done!”, some people don’t like that. So you really need to know your people to be able to keep it positive. You meant it positively but “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. The recipient has to appreciate this. What is the most effective consequence? Positive, immediate, certain, negative, future, uncertain. You can mix and match those terms a bit. And usually most people say that the most effective is positive, immediate, certain but actually is negative, immediate and certain. For instance, if you get burned when you touch some fire. That has a very immediate negative consequence that you will remember. You might only think twice and you’ll stop touching fire. If you trip and fall, gravity will get you every time and it hurts. The most effective is actually negative, immediate and certain. However, we’ll forgive nature for tripping us and burning us. Where we have some choice, in an office setting, that only works in the short term. Because nobody will work for you in the long term or at least only to comply and you’ll create a whole negative atmosphere and only get the compliant behavior we’ve been talking about. The most effective in the long term is definitely positive, immediate and certain. Which brings me to ask, which do you think the worst modifying behavior is? The worst is negative, future and uncertain. That’s really bad practice. Telling somebody that you’re denying them a future bonus for something that they did weeks ago. Particularly if they’ve been doing it for a while and you’ve never corrected it in the past. So something that’s negative and in the future and it’s inconsistent, uncertain…that’s a terrible way to manage. Positive/certain/future isn’t much better. I once was given a bonus and I had no idea why. My manager said “well, you were nominated for it”. I said “that’s great, who by?” and said “your previous manager”. This is about a year later, it’s wonderful and I was happy because it was quite a lot of money but the fact that it was future and uncertain hadn’t had any effect on me and I was just confused. The future/uncertain is really bad. What you should aim for is what the title says there, positive/immediate/certain from the perspective of the recipient. And it can be something small like “good job” right away when they actually think they did a good job you both noticed. Think of times when somebody has said that to you and they were sincere. It kind of puts a spring in your step. So let’s see what happens when you give these types of feedback.

31:05 – Slide 14 (Consequences: R+): So this is R+. Consequences for negative and positive reinforcement. Introducing here extinction and punishment. I’ve got a grid here and I’ve obviously highlighted the top left because that’s what you want. Most of the time anyway. We really want to focus on increasing the desired behavior and decreasing undesired behavior. And the best consequence is to get what you want. So you as a manager needs to know what somebody wants and what you want for the project, what your team did and quickly give something like a “thank you” or handshake. It really is very powerful. The positive reinforcement does not have to be expensive but you may perhaps give a gift card. Make sure that service or gift card is something the person will actually use. Annual bonuses and rewards need to be tied into clearly communicated good behaviors. You’ve got to build that along the way. It’s no good saying nothing for a whole year and then surprising somebody with a bonus that was a little intangible. Nice as it is to receive, it won’t do much to change the behavior. So we’re going to walkthrough a […] example of this because there’s a lot going on on that side. We’ve got positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, extinction, punishment and the combinations of what people get and don’t get, want and they don’t want.

33:13 – Slide 15 (PBL example): In this example it’s all about meeting or several meetings, what happens. Someone makes a good suggestion in a meeting, you thank them. Well that’s positive, it’s immediate and certain. They know you’re a good manager so it’s certain, you did it right away and it’s positive. So they got a “thank you” and they want a “thank you”. So that’s positive reinforcement increasing desired behavior because they made a good suggestion. Now, they like that so much they keep talking, too much, so you ignore them. So when you ignore them, that is distinguishing that they’re talking too much because they do not get the praise that they want. So they want to be thanked but they don’t get it. So now you are decreasing the undesired behavior of disruptive talking. The surprising thing is, this works even if you know it’s happening. I mention at the beginning of the webinar that these are techniques you can use as the manager. You can learn this, you can use it but even if you’re on the team, a team member, even if you know this is happening, it still works. It’s really powerful. So you think “why is the manager ignoring me? I’ve been talking for twenty minutes with all these good ideas”. Well it’s because they want you to shut up. Let other people speak. Extinguishing is the next step. Decreasing undesired behavior.

35:13 – Slide 16 (PBL example cont.): What if they really go for it and they’re still talking? Now, you’re going to have to talk to them. Privately, you’re going to give them some feedback. So you’re going to use SBI and NORMS. And the NIC so we’re going to use the whole alphabet soon here. They keep talking and you give them feedback privately. The situation is that they’re disrupting a meeting. The behavior is that they’ve talked for thirty minutes so that’s not an opinion, it’s observable. It’s reliable, it’s measurable and it’s specific. The impact was that they stopped others from contributing and you request that they listen as well as talk. Now they got something that they did not want. So that’s a NIC (negative, immediate and certain) because you’re a consistent good boss, you did it right away. Nobody likes being talked to so that’s a negative. And you can see if you deliver that kind of feedback in this way, there’s no wiggle room. You can quantify and observe and be specific on exactly what’s going on. And you request that they do something different. Now, they’ve got something, they’ve got a talking to they don’t want so that was a punishment. So now, the next meeting, what’s going to happen? They’re going to keep quit, they’re going to stop. They’re not going to say anything. Now, they don’t get the punishment that they don’t want. You’re extinguishing a negative reinforcement. They do work very well. They don’t get something they don’t want, they don’t get the praise that they do want. It is subtle but it does work. So now they recover for a meeting. They didn’t say anything, They didn’t get praise but they didn’t get punished either.

37:27 – Slide 17 (PBL example cont.): Then the following meeting, what’s going to happen is they remember that you’re a consistently good leader and make a suggestion like they did last time. Let them, good job! “Well done” (to them). So they get the praise that they want, that’s positive reinforcement and they listen the rest of the meeting so everybody benefits. Walking through that example shows you how to pull all of this together for PBL. That persons performance will improve, the whole team and you’ll get your project done on time and on budget.

38:25 – Slide 18 (PM Power Skills Skills): These are taken from a project management institute. The PMI’s Talent Triangle. These are different skills from managing. So managing tends to be more transactional, more directive, short-term “do this, do that”. Power Skills tends to be longer term. Bigger picture. You’re not telling somebody what to do, you’re guiding them. You’ve seen some techniques, how to influence and develop people. Develop their behavior. You might also have a look at some of those competencies where you’re developing people with some of the skills, maybe some training. As a leader, your leadership skillsThe PBL techniques with SBIR and focusing on consequences. NORMS based. That means they will learn to trust you and be inspired and motivated. In order to get them to do the discretionary effort, you can challenge people. I mentioned that having a baseline in the measurement slide. If you measure the productivity of the team, have a look and see, well that’s my baseline and maybe from a previous project you should know what a baseline maybe should be. Maybe they’re on it, maybe they’re above or below but you can always challenge them. Say “hey this is where we were for last few months, let’s see if we can do better”. What would it take, let’s see if we can exceed it, the client has asked us to do something. See if you can challenge people, get them to focus. Sometimes you have the luxury of a project team that is dedicated just to you and sometimes they’re on several other tasks, other jobs. They have operational tasks, they’re not usually on project teams. Sometimes they’re on a project team but there’s several and how do they know which one to work on today? So you want them to work on your project so you’ve got to the best leader that you can be and sometimes challenging people in a way that they can meet that challenge, it gives you tremendous sense of satisfaction. You can get them to focus and align with what needs to be done. Not just working harder. They’re working harder together and in the direction that you need. In order to be able to do all of this, it sounds great but in order to get them to do that you need some techniques. You have learn how to deal with people in a way that’s authentic, courteous, creative and bear in mind cultural differences. You’ll notice that those are in alphabetical order. I’ve gone as far as “C”. There are quote a few other characteristics that you need to have or characteristics in the way that you interact with people you need to bear in my mind as you improve your leadership skills. All of which are necessary, you can’t necessarily do every single one all the time and you get better at it. Begins to come naturally. Providing a list, it helps you say “whoa, today or this week I’m going to focus on being authentic and then I’m going to try to be more courteous”. After you’ve done all of them for a while, it does begin to come naturally and having a list helps. Communicating is probably the most important thing the PM does and it helps with leadership because you listen a lot and speak a little so when you speak, it carries some weight because you’ve thought about what it is you’re going to say because you’ve been listening. You have something to communicate that other people may not have heard and it definitely helps if you listen a lot and then speak a little. Communication is mostly about listening. Your communication plan will include a lot of listening, a lot of interacting with stakeholders, now you need to do a stakeholder plan as well. Communicating is vital for your PM leadership skills. That all forms a part of that talent triangle which is leadership, technical project management and strategic and business management.

44:10 – Slide 19 (Build Teams): Building teams. What we’re talking about here is how do you build that team and how do you get them to perform. It was Tuckman who identified those first four things (forming, storming, NORMing and performing) and then later he added adjourning. It’s an applicable word and it sort of fits in with the rhyme so that’s quite good. When you’re forming, this is another good technique that as the project manager or a team lead, if you know that this is happening and you think about these steps, it helps you to get to a high performing team and you’ve got your performance based leadership built right in. Because we’re trying to perform so how do you do that? Sometimes you get to select your team, or you’re given them and they meet for the first time. That’s forming, as you pull your team together. Storming is kind of negative, isn’t it? So they realize the huge task and each others weaknesses. In storming, there can be some conflict. It’s a bit overwhelming and it might get a bit negative during that storming time. Recognize that these are steps that the teams go through and as the leader, say “okay, that’s happening” and see if you can move on to NORMing and become excited about the project and each other’s strengths. A lot of communication goes on there. You help your team focus on the project, the goals, objectives, what it looks like from the customers perspective, their perspective and think about the project itself and how cool it is to do this. And that you do in fact have a lot of strengths and they begin to solve those problems so they become the difficulties and the challenges that are identified during the storming phase. You start to pull together and look at it from the positive perspective during the NORMing phase.  They get excited about it and their strengths. During performing, which is where you want to get them to, they work together towards the project’s objective and you’ve got to keep them on track. That’s very important to keep them in the performing step and get them there as quickly as possible and keep them there. Lead your team through each step. Start and lead them through steps when changes occur making sure that they get to perform. Some teams don’t ever get to perform, they continue storming and NORMing, looking at the huge task and weaknesses, maybe getting excited about the project but they may not get to performing or not very often. The causes for that may be your leadership. Maybe you need to help them get through those and provide the leadership and guidance that they need. Sometimes it’s external if the project itself changes or if the team changes. You essentially go back to forming again because a new team member or new project, leadership, even customers walking out. That’s an essential stakeholders part of the team. Introducing scope change, that changes the project as well. All of that churned will often take the team back to forming, storming and NORMing again. So you’ve got to recognize that and try to keep some stability and if it happens just be open and honest about it. Keep the communication going. Recognize that it’s happening and get back to performing as soon as possible. And then lastly, which is added later, is the adjourning. You make sure that they have a good place to go and keep in contact. The adjourning part speaks a lot to trust. People will want to come to work for you on a project. Projects by their very nature have a beginning, middle and end. It’s a short term endeavor to create a unique product. What happens to the people when that project is finished? You can’t just say “okay, thanks!”. If you make sure that they have a. Good place to go and keep in touch with them, then next time you have a project to do, they’ll be much more likely to work for you and pull together, they had a good time. They’ll come back to you and your forming, storming, NORMing and performing period will be a lot shorter. And if they trust you, your next project will go so much better. The adjourning, this is a job for you, to make sure they have a good place to go. You found your contacts, you put them on other projects and keep in contact with them. That’s a really important step.

49:52 – Slide 20 (Build Teams): Another part of building teams is is to build on each other’s strengths so this is almost part of the NORMing side of things. So building on each other’s needs, strengths and interests and empower the team. You as the PM, you don’t have to be the subject matter expert on everything. You couldn’t possibly be. It would be too broad and that’s not what your role is anyway, you’re supposed to be good at leading a team. Focus on what you’re doing there. Instead of staffing by assigning people to jobs, you ask who is good at what? What would they like to do? What are the skills needed? You ask the team to brainstorm. What skills do you need, what would they like to do, who is good at it and you listen a lot. Then you can speak. Then you set expectations for hard work and results. Then it’s up to you to clear the path for your team and to be a guide.

-I’ve got a question here for slide 20…What if the individual decides not to participate in the future because they were spoken to initially? Well, it you’ve spoken to them and it really was NORMS based and you really did give the situation the impact…the question is, what if the person doesn’t come around after using the positive reinforcement, how do you motivate that? Well, again, now you can go back to giving them some more situation behavior and impact. What if they don’t participate? You can go back to them and say “hey, I noticed you haven’t been participating. You did give a suggestion a while ago and then I spoke to you. I value your input, you’re an expert in what you do, you’re on the team for a reason and we need your input. The impact is, we’re not getting the benefit of your expertise and I request that you do speak up when it’s appropriate”. You don’t have to follow this like I described. You can go back to this. But try to make it positive. The way I described it before is that you’re giving them negative feedback. Now what you’re going to do is give them positive feedback. The positive feedback is that you really value their input and you want them to speak up to the appropriate amount. If they don’t get from here to there, you can go back to giving them some positive feedback. I hope that answers that question.

53:42 – Slide 20 (Build Teams cont.): You don’t have to be the SME, ask who is good at what, what they would like to do and where are skills needed then you set the expectations for hard work and results. Clear the path for your team.

54:00 – Slide 21 (Authentic Power Skills): This is the latest thing in leadership skills. So it’s not yet validated by data driven results but it is backed by many leaders. It’s a little to early to talk about measurable improvements as a result of authentic leadership…it’s got a lot of promise. This asserts that legitimacy does not only come from authority or your position, it’s best if it comes from your own skills. In authentic leadership the come from your own skills and they include trusting and accepting others, valuing follower’s input…you want it, the right amount. Being ethical. You’ve got to be real, being open with them. You have to know yourself, be a good leader yourself. And being honest. The slide before we said you don’t have to be the subject matter expert on everything. Say “hey, I don’t know how to do this, who does?”. That goes a long way. You do know how to lead people, you know how to keep them on time, on budget and on cost. You do know how to lead them through the big picture. But be honest if you don’t know the answer yourself then open that up for people to confide in you.

56:10 – Slide 22 (Topics): So this is the initial slide. We discussed discretionary effort and how important it is and how much more people can give. Antecedents, behavior and consequence, DCOM. Direction, competence, opportunity and motivation. And then you’ve got the behavior which is what people say and do. The techniques we discussed were NORMS. Observable, reliable, measurable and specific. We discussed some measurements to do with what that person does and also the effect on the whole team. How/s the team performing, you can establish a baseline and set some stretch goals that are realistic and achievable. That in itself is very motivating. If you need to give feedback, use specific to describe the behavior. Request the results, the change in behavior that the persons give and indeed this can be positive and negative. You tend to think of giving feedback as negative but they can also be positive. The consequences are best done as positive, immediate and certain. You want to create an environment where people want to work you because it’s nice. If it’s negative all the time, then if the only feedback you get is negative and people want to work for you, in the long term it will create a negative spiral and you won’t be able to get out of it, you won’t get the results you want. So you want to keep those consequences positive. Then we discussed some PM leadership skills of the forming, NORMing, storming, performing and adjourning and some of the newer techniques. To be open, honest, know yourself and I hope that you are going to find out and use more things.

Watch the on-demand recording of Performance Based Power Skills.