Philadelphia -
As a leader, are your standards and performance expectations of yourself and your people high? If so, good. Well, that is until those high standards become an unwise and dysfunctional push for perfectionism, which typically lowers standards and performance.
If your standards are set appropriately high, however, the central challenge becomes providing the support your people need to meet and exceed the standards. Standards and support are - or at least should be - inextricably linked.
The renown University of Texas psychologist David Yeager’s work with parenting sheds light on this subject. On a recent Remarkable People podcast (August 7) with Guy Kawasaki, Dr. Yeager used a 2x2 matrix to illustrate the relationship between standards and support across four types that apply well to parents, teachers, and people in leadership positions: Enforcers, Protectors, Apathetics, and Mentors.
Enforcers (High Standards, Low Support) demand high standards in a fear-based, sink-or-swim environment without much support. In this Darwinian view, only the best survive and prosper. Protectors (Low Standards, High Support) often take the opposite approach by relaxing standards and, some might say coddling their people. Their caring attitude manifests in large doses of support and the worry that the person they are leading or parenting will lose confidence if they are exposed and held to high standards. They hope to inch them along to a better place but, in the process, they do them and their organizations no favors. Apathetics (Low Standards, Low Support) are checked out in Yeager's terms and merit little attention in this analysis.
This takes us to the fourth category on the matrix, Mentors (High Standards, High Support), which is generally the winning formula. At least three challenges come to mind in the Mentoring quadrant however, which can be thought of in terms of Time, Fit, and Failure.
1. Time - Providing support takes time. It requires a growth mindset with the ability and willingness to invest in the development of your people. Too many of us work under the charade that we are too busy to engage in the substantive, consistent development of our people. Not doing so, however, will ultimately consume much more of your time in dealing with performance issues and, perhaps, removing people from your organization.
2. Fit - Your organization is a composite sketch of people. Different people need different types of support. This is not a one-size-fits-all algorithm. Some of your folks may require technical training. Others may need to improve their communication skills. Most will need new, applied insights into emotional intelligence. Guess what? Fitting the support to the individual also takes time. If done well, however, it's worth it.
3. Failure - Your people will fail. This is inevitable. The key question is, how will you deal with their failure? Is failure due to their not understanding the standards? Did they lack the necessary support? Yes, perhaps. Failure has many causes, however. Progress is made when failure is dealt with in terms of your people interpreting and achieving the standards - or not - and when the learning opportunities available through failure are a meaningful manifestation of support.
Image courtesy of BioPharm International.