Progressive Managers’ Network

A whelmer is someone who we manage at work who neither overwhelms us with their professional expertise. enthusiasm and commitment, nor underwhelms us with their lack of talent and commitment.

They inhabit the middle ground of mediocrity.

Whelmers are a problem because they act as cultural magnets, performance benchmarks in the organisation.  They are the experts in knowing just what has to be done to be seen by the organisation as ‘acceptable’.

So what should we do when we recognise that we have a whelmer on the team.  The first thing to do is to look in the mirror.  The person you see is the one who has allowed a human being with energy, enthusiasm, talent and passion (you did check for those things when you recruited them didn’t you) into a whelmer.  In order to change their response to your management style, you need to change the way you manage.  Keep on doing what you have always done….

The first thing to do is to invest time in building a relationship with the whelmer.  Let them know that you know they are capable of giving more and ask what you need to do (or stop doing) if they are to give of their best.  Don’t just do this once.  Keep doing it.  Regularly. Not just at annual reviews but at least monthly, preferably weekly.  Let them know that you value them and that you want to see them doing well.  Make it clear that you EXPECT MORE.

Secondly focus on the behaviours that they exhibit that make you think ‘whelmer’.

• Is it that they never accept delegation?
• Never volunteer to work on projects?
• Hardly contribute to meetings?
• Rarely smile or express a positive reaction?

Get specific about the behaviours and then use feedback to make sure that the whelmer knows exactly what they are doing that causes you, and no doubt others, to be ‘whelmed’ by their contribution to the workplace.  Give the feedback freely and consistently and make it clear that yo expect them change.  Feedback must be given properly for it to e effective though - so come along to one of our training events to learn how to do it well!

Thirdly spend some time understanding what they are looking for from the organisation.  Most whelmers join with high hopes and every intention to be an overwhelmer.  But as ambition is thwarted they slip into the ranks of the whelmers.

Maslow is relevant here.

Most whelmers wanted to achieve something of importance.  They not only wanted a salary and a sense of belonging but they also wanted to make the world a better place when they chose to work for you.  But you have failed them.  They have recognised that they are unable to achieve this higher purpose in the organisation (no doubt due to resource restrictions or politics) and so have given up on this higher purpose and settled for the monthly salary and a quiet and unspectacular working life.  Often the whelmers will do their self actualising outside of work where they will show incredible passion, skills and enthusiasm for anything from stamp collecting to binge drinking.

So re-visit their hopes and aspirations for working for you.  Talk to them.  Re-kindle their belief that they can achieve something worthwhile at work and then re-double your efforts through feedback, coaching and delegation to give them the opportunities that they need to be a real force for progress in the organisation.

By helping a whelmer step up to being an overwhelmer not only will you and they have a much better time at work but also productivity is likely to increase by 25-40%.

Tom Peters encourages managers to obsess on R.O.I.R - the Return on Investment in Relationships.

ROIR through 121s comes in many forms:

1. increased staff retention
2. improved productivity
3. recognition and acknowledgement of progress
4. appreciation of those who are performing well
5. identification of under performance and early resolution
6. promotion of behaviours that reinforce strategic goals and values
7. increased tempo of coaching to develop potential and performance
8. deeper professional relationships
9. increased trust
10. increased influence
11. increased responsiveness
12. better support of team members in their work
13. conduit for ideas from the front line to be heard and acted upon
14. management support for every member of the team - every week
15. improved communication and focus on what matters
16. progress made and recognised on a weekly basis
17. increased sense of urgency in the team
18. encourage individuals to think through their contribution to team or organisational objectives
19. increased initiative and enterprise
20. planning remains flexible and dynamic
21. documentation makes performance reviews simpler and less contentious
22. barriers to high performance are removed
23. factors contributing to poor performance are identified and resolved
24. formal opportunities for delegation
25. feedback - both given and received
26. increased employee engagement
27. improved knowledge management and knowledge sharing
28. better talent management and development
29. increased creativity
30. more responsibility taken voluntarily by more people
31. reduced absenteeism
32. more diversity as 121s recognise that ‘one size fits one’

• Firstly you have to be prepared to be obsessed by high performance, improvement and making the most of potential. Organisational rhetoric will always advocate this. However, in practice the rhetoric of excellence is dropped in favour of more pragmatic and easily achieved compromises.
• Secondly, enlightened management practices can feel very uncomfortable especially to begin with. They are not our default management style. Our spontaneous management style is an expression of our deeply held, often subconscious, values and beliefs. And sometimes these are driven by more more traditional management concepts of power and control and more of a focus on the task than on developing the potential of the team to deliver excellence. So we wrap ourselves in the tools and techniques of enlightened management but underneath there is always a little voice saying ‘Just give a few orders, crack a few heads and get things done’. Only if we persist will we recognise that relationships are improving, more initiative is being shown, teams are performing better and genuine progress is being made. Only then will the nagging voice encouraging us to revert to the old fashioned ways start to fade away. And this is a process of substantial personal development. It is the process of becoming a different person with different attitudes and beliefs about what ‘excellence in management’ is all about. Now the tools and techniques of ‘enlightened management’ feel much more congruous with who we are as a person.
• The third difficulty is the response of your team and the wider organisation to your changing management style. You start to use regular 121s, you give and seek feedback - frequently. Furthermore you expect it to be acted upon. You start coaching - everyone in your team - and expecting things to get better on a weekly basis. And you delegate consistently and well - not from a place that says ‘I can get some of my work done by others’ - but from a place that says ‘giving people the opportunity to take on these challenges will help them to develop and keep them interested an fulfilled in their work’. And what response do you get? Often it is a combination of surprise, discomfort, antagonism and disbelief. Usually there is a hope that if we can just keep things quiet for a while you will get over whatever training programme you have been on and things will get back to the mediocrity that passes for normal.

Tom Peters encourages managers to obsess on R.O.I.R - the Return on Investment in Relationships.

Usually what has to be invested is not cash - but time. And the challenge is to invest that time effectively.

For me, without doubt, the most effective tool for ROIR with employees is the 121. These are structured, documented 30 minute meetings held with each member of staff, every week. They provide the most effective ROIR with employees that I have ever seen.

ROIR through 121s comes in many forms:

1. increased staff retention
2. improved productivity
3. recognition and acknowledgement of progress
4. appreciation of those who are performing well
5. identification of under performance and early resolution
6. promotion of behaviours that reinforce strategic goals and values
7. increased tempo of coaching to develop potential and performance
8. deeper professional relationships
9. increased trust
10. increased influence
11. increased responsiveness
12. better support of team members in their work
13. conduit for ideas from the front line to be heard and acted upon
14. management support for every member of the team - every week
15. improved communication and focus on what matters
16. progress made and recognised on a weekly basis
17. increased sense of urgency in the team
18. encourage individuals to think through their contribution to team or organisational objectives
19. increased initiative and enterprise
20. planning remains flexible and dynamic
21. documentation makes performance reviews simpler and less contentious
22. barriers to high performance are removed
23. formal opportunities for delegation
24. feedback - both given and received
25. increased employee engagement

Perhaps some of these are things that you as a manager need to work on. If you are already using 121s then think how you can use them more effectively for the things that matter most to you and your business.

If you are not already using 121s then you have a tremendous opportunity to improve your management practice.

By the way - additions to the list are very welcome!

David Maister says “Great managers give lots of responsibility early, are available to help, set and enforce high standards (on things other than just financial results), demand participation by all team members and set a high personal example.”

How do do you stack up?

Good bosses delegate.

Great bosses set up sensible monitoring routines so that they know how that delegation is going.

Good bosses engage employees in helping them with major projects.

Great bosses give their team members the major projects and are available to support them as required. They give the team members room to operate - without cutting them off.

Good bosses walk around the office talking to people - what Tom Peters calls Managing by Wandering Around or MBWA.

Great ones do that too, but they are careful not to ‘intrude’. They use MBWA as a way of getting information that helps them to give accurate feedback, to coach effectively and to delegate.

Here is a ‘Management Makeover’ recipe to improve organisational culture and performance - fast.

• Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of communication throughout the organisation. Do this through effective 121s, team meetings, project meetings and ’skip level’ meetings. Train people to make these meetings REALLY work. Make sure that the communication regime works both ways - that managers listen as well as they talk.
• Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of feedback in the organisation. Train everyone how to give, receive and act on feedback. Train managers how to escalate feedback if it is not acted on effectively. Once everyone knows how their performance is perceived, what is working well and what needs further development, they will start to develop - fast. Make feedback a part of every day work - not a quarterly event!
• Train every manager to coach every member of their team, every week, to improve their performance. Use coaching to establish learning firmly in the workplace and focus it on providing a better service. A weekly coaching routine provides a great tempo to learning and performance improvement. Train managers to use coaching for performance improvement - helping good people to become great. However also equip them to coach under-performers - if necessary as part of a formal performance process.
• Train managers to delegate prodigiously. Train them to use delegation as a tool to provide opportunities for those who are hungry to learn and develop their contribution to the organisation. Use delegation, supported by coaching, feedback and great communication to significantly increase the capacity of your organisation.

Communication, Feedback, Coaching and Delegation. Managers who do these four things consistently well stand head and shoulders above their peers. Their teams perform better and keep improving.

All four are relatively easy to learn - requiring more commitment, courage and discipline than skill. For most people a three hour training session on each gives them the basics. They then just need to practice and learn perhaps with some additional advice and support along the way. The challenge in implementing this ‘Management Make’ over is in developing a new set of management habits. And this takes, time, courage and discipline.

But don’t rush it. If this recipe is going to work managers need time to develop and put into practice what they have learned.

Start with better communication through 121s. As soon as 121s have bedded down, after 4-6 weeks introduce training on feedback. Let this have a month to bed in before developing coaching, and a further month before training in delegation.

Within 6 months you will have transformed the culture and performance of your organisation. And this Management Makeover will be much more than skin deep.

Just imagine…

1. You work in an organisation where everyone gets 30 minutes every week 121 time with their manager to look at how the right work can be done more effectively and to work on communication, trust and respect;
2. Everyone is coached - every week - by their manager. They learn things on a weekly basis and use what they learn to create value;
3. Everyone gets feedback - several times a day. The feedback recognises, appreciates and encourages the good stuff. It also raises awareness around behaviours that people might want to re-think. Everyone knows that feedback is not an emotional big deal. It is just information that is designed to help;
4. Everyone delegates effectively. They expect to be delegated to at least every other month as part of their professional development. Managers ‘delegate and develop’ routinely so that they can consistently do the important (but never urgent) stuff well (stuff like strategy, RnD, customer contact, stakeholder management etc).
5. People who struggle to deliver on their role in the time that the organisation pays them are helped - through feedback and coaching - to find ways to get what they need to get done in the work hours available to them.

What difference would developing these 5 management processes make in your team?

• How do you get other people to do what needs to be done?
• How do you make time and space in your diary to do the things that only you can do?
• How do you manage to escape doing those aspects of the job that you don’t like or find hard?

Delegation of course.

But what if your team, the pool of people available to delegate to, is just like you?  Similar personalities and temperaments.  Similar preferences and skills.

If you fall into this trap then those things that you want to delegate - they are likely to want to delegate too.  The jobs that you hate - they will hate too.  delegation becomes a difficult, risky and painful process.

If on the other hand you have a diverse team with a wide variety of skills and preferences then it is likely that you will find someone to delegate to who will enjoy the new work.

By recruiting a team with diverse skills and preferences you will make delegation much more straightforward.

This is a great post that I think says a lot about manager/employee relations in much of UK management.

Personal Assistants and secretaries marching in the streets to demand the opportunity to

• unleash their potential at work;
• make progress not coffee;
• be recognised as ‘career girls not cover girls’ and as ‘office heroes’.

It captures what the Progressive Managers Network is all about - developing managers that provide these iopportunites all of the time toevery one on the team.

All power to their elbow!