Patch Adams is a one-of-a-kind. A guy who approaches life much, much differently than most us.

On the other hand, his enthusiasm and love for people would be a welcome addition to almost any company…well, at least he would be welcomed by the employees.

A good friend recently wrote a Blog post regarding a scene from the movie Patch Adams (click here to read Steve Laswell’s excellent article). In this particular scene, Patch learns a profound lesson that would forever impact his perspectives on being a doctor. The lesson? See the people.

A pretty good lesson for managers, too, I think.

See the people. Don’t see “resources” to be manipulated. Don’t see “employees” that create problems. Don’t see “HR issues”. Or “interruptions.” See the people.

Late in the movie, Patch addresses a board that has been convened to determine whether or not he will be allowed to graduate from medical school. In this scene he says, “If you treat a disease – you win, you lose. If you treat a person, I guarantee you win.” This would be great advice for managers as well. High performance is a function of many things, but one of those things is a desire to perform at a high level. That desire will rarely be manifest for a manager that doesn’t see the person.

Click the play button to view the movie trailer starring Robin Williams.

What can managers do to “see the person?” Steve provides four excellent ideas in his Blog article, and I want to reiterate one of those ideas here; an idea that is foundational to 1-on-1 Management™. Invest in each employee one-on-one. As Steve asks in his article, do you spend “Real – uninterrupted – dedicated – “you’re important in my world” time with your employees? [Or...are you an accomplished multi-tasker? You might want to re-read the 1-on-1 Management™ Blog post on multi-tasking...]

The secret to great management is to develop the talent and potential of the people that work for you. Only then will you alleviate some of the stress and time pressure that you constantly experience at work.

To develop their talent you will first have to see the people.

If you lead a team, or are trying to build an effective team, you should immediately order Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.

There are a number of issues to consider when building a high-performance team and Lencioni’s book will give you some powerful insights into creating a good team. Although he discusses five “dysfunctions,” I believe the first is easily the most important: the absence of trust.

In the absence of trust teams and organizations fail–or fail to reach their potential. Many times those teams or companies come completely apart as the lack of trust leads to unresolved conflict, which, in turn, can spiral completely out of control.

This is a very common problem, one that is often traced directly to the manager, team-leader, business owner, or CEO. Remember this: leadership defines an organization, and if you want your team to trust you, you must be trustworthy. With this in mind, there are certain mistakes you simply cannot make and engender trust in the people that work for you.

1. You cannot be secretive. “Transparency” is an absolute necessity to create organizational trust. Decisions made in secret, or without adequate communication, lead to speculation and and employee’s assuming the worst. If you favor certain individuals and attempt to keep it hidden, it will come back to bite you. If you manipulate things behind the scenes to get what you want, be warned that your trustworthiness will suffer.

2. You cannot be guilty of poor communication. You must communicate early, often, and consistently. Too many managers fail miserably when it comes to communicating effectively. Worse, they establish an environment that will not allow differing opinions or bad news. To create a high-performance team, open up the lines of communication and create dialogue with your team members.
3. You cannot fail to do the things you say you will do. I frequently see managers make promises on the way out the door, passing someone in the hall, or at a lunch meeting and then fail to follow through on the promise. When you tell someone you will do something, write it down, follow-up and deliver, and then confirm with them once you have done as promised.

Here is the bottom line when it comes to organizational dynamics: no trust, no influence. If your people do not trust you – which, by the way, doesn’t necessarily mean you are dishonest or unethical – you cannot influence them to perform at the highest level.

A team without trust is simply a dysfunctional team.

Empowerment seems to be one of those buzzwords that makes people crazy. It is as though the word itself is ascribed with the power to change people in an instant – and I am not necessarily suggesting change in a positive way.

Employees can get a whiff of “empowerment” and be guilty of interpreting it as a license to do just about anything. After all, if you have been empowered, it means that an enlightened boss has finally seen the merits of allowing you – the employee – to make your own decisions, work at your own pace, and create new and improved ways of doing your job (Note: improved from your perspective, not necessarily the company’s perspective).

On the other hand, I can mention the word empowerment to a group of managers and I am likely to get a number of reactions…all bad. Some will roll their eyes, others will look like they just went three rounds with Chuck Liddell (see AP picture above), and others may be seen running and screaming out of the door. I’ve often thought that an effective way to avoid working with a difficult client would be to insist that I can teach their managers how to “empower” the employees.

The word empower is translated in a variety of ways: 1) to give official authority or legal power; 2) to delegate authority; 3) to equip or supply with an ability; 4) to enable or permit. As you might imagine, without an alignment of understanding and an agreement on the desired results, “empowering” employees could lead to confusion and disgruntled employees when the intent was to increase productivity and engage employees.

To give you an idea of the potential for misunderstanding, here is an excerpt from a Human Resources website:

When thinking about empowerment in human relations terms, try to avoid thinking of it as something that one individual does for another. This is one of the problems organizations have experienced with the concept of empowerment. People think that “someone,” usually the manager, has to bestow empowerment on the people who report to him.

Consequently, the reporting staff members “wait” for the bestowing of empowerment, and the manager asks why people won’t act in empowered ways. This led to a general unhappiness, mostly undeserved, with the concept of empowerment in many organizations.

Think of empowerment, instead, as the process of an individual enabling himself to take action and control work and decision making in autonomous ways.

“Enabling himself” to make decisions? I don’t know about you, but I’m not giving that idea too much chance of success…

“Why did I make that decision on my own? Well, because I have decided to enable myself to take action and control my work and decision making. No, actually, I don’t believe we have talked about it before, but I wasn’t about to wait around for you to empower me – I empowered myself!”

Uh huh.

Contrary to the thoughts above, empowerment is not achieved unless there is agreement between the two parties – in this case, the manager and the employee – of what exactly you are empowered to do. Without specific parameters, one or both parties are sure to be disappointed in the results. At the same time, empowering someone to do something requires allowing them to do it – even if they make mistakes. Failure is often the best tool in teaching if it is approached properly.

Briefly, two important factors related to employee empowerment are: 1) level of authority, and 2) boundaries and conditions. Level of authority indicates how a decision can be made by an employee. For instance, in a new task where an employee has limited experience, the level of authority might be to ask before making a decision (Level 1). In a project where the employee has extensive experience, is quite familiar with all variables, and has demonstrated the successful ability to make decisions, the level of authority might be to make your own decision based on your best judgment (Level 4).

Other levels of authority might include making a decision but informing the manager afterward (Level 3) or checking with one or more team members before making a decision (Level 2).

Boundaries and conditions set the parameters for making decisions. A very good example is the military “Rules of Engagement“, which will dictate where, when, against whom, and under what conditions deadly force may be used. Often, when setting boundaries and conditions, a set of “non-negotiables” may apply. These are situations where the decision is predetermined and is not negotiable. For instance, a sales rep may be told that she cannot ever offer a discount beyond 20%, or a hazardous materials driver knows that he may not legally transport materials that are not properly labeled or secured.

Empowerment is not a concept to be scared of or dismissed out of hand. In fact, a high-performance organization will have “empowered” teams and employees. The difference is that there will be a mutual understanding all around of exactly what that means.

A college textbook on management teaches that management encompasses the following functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Typically, the aspects of management that creates the majority of problems for managers – and, coincidentally, are the areas in which managers have little or no training – is leading and controlling.

Dealing with people.

I doubt that anyone would argue the assertion that developing employees is a sure way to improve the performance of any team, department, or company. Capitalizing on each employee’s strengths, improving their skills, and empowering them to use their abilities, creates more potential for the organization.

Of course, a second critical part of leadership is ensuring that those individuals are working together as a team and are focused on doing the right things. As has been said, management is about making sure people are “doing things right”, while leadership is about making sure that the people are “doing the right things”.

As a dear friend of mine likes to say, “I’m telling you something important here.” Your employees can be incredibly busy and still be doing very little to improve the performance of the organization. Managers MUST ensure that employee energies and creativity are being directed towards the activities that will produce results consistent with the company’s mission and objectives. Being busy is not the goal – reaching critical objectives is the goal.

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker

With Drucker’s quote in mind, what exactly is most important thing a manager should be doing at any given time? Usually, it is the URGENT things that become “critically important”. However, further examination should reveal that the vitally important items for a manager are 1) strategic planning, and 2) developing people. However, since these functions do not hit the radar screen as “urgent” – i.e., MUST be done today or the planet will implode – they are consistently delayed and/or ignored.

Customer problems, project deadlines, meetings, budgets…our days are filled with emergencies, and our time becomes occupied with putting out fires. Ironically, a manager will complain of a lack of time to get anything done when more effective planning and more capable people would make a real difference – in both performance AND time availability.

Is it time to reassess priorities?

There is always the boss who only knows one way to do things – his way. I had the opportunity to work for that guy not too long ago. His favorite thing to say when he disagreed with anyone’s opinion was, “you’re not thinking about this right.” I always found that to be an interesting statement, and I knew exactly what he meant. He was saying, “You’re not thinking about it like me.”

A classic misstep for many managers is getting locked into one way of attacking a challenge or an opportunity. Certainly, there are procedures or business operations that can only be done effectively one correct way, but the issues we are considering here are almost always matters of opinion or perspective. When a manager does not listen to the ideas of others, or give them the opportunity to pursue other courses of action, several things happen. First of all, creativity is squelched. Second, employees learn not to take risks. Third, team members learn not to move forward without the direct approval of the manager.

For the micro-manager, I may have just described nirvana! These are managers who typically prescribe to the axiom that “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself”, and they believe no one else can do it as well as they can. They believe that no one else is capable of making critical decisions – nor do they attempt to develop the employee’s ability to make those decisions. This process creates one of two crippling effects for the organization – either the manager is incapable of hiring talented players and the organization is full of marginal performers, or, upon hiring talented players the manager stifles much of their ability, which ultimately leads to turnover.
“Results equal power. Better decisions create better results. Better options create better decisions. Diversity creates better options. Therefore, diversity equals power.”

Jim Kearns, DuPont Fiber
The bottom line is that these types of managers simply do not trust people. There is no way to get away from that conclusion. Great managers are defined by their ability to identify talented employees, use and further develop their potential, and create high-performance work teams. To be fair, a mediocre manager may actually be a highly skilled and productive individual, but the capacity of the team will always be limited by the manager’s own capability because he does not develop the potential of his employees.

In the highly acclaimed business best-seller Good to Great, Jim Collins says that “leadership is about vision, but leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted.” Unfortunately for the company, many managers equate management with knowing more than anyone else and making all of the decisions – why else would they have been promoted to the position of manager??

The genius of Collins’ observation is that great managers actually believe quite the opposite. While creating an environment of excellence and high expectations, the great manager believes that there is still much to be learned from every situation and each employee. As John Maxwell has often said, “leaders are learners“.

If you don’t understand that, perhaps you’re just not thinking about it right.