Tentative Title: The Question Method – The Step–by-Step System to Optimize Employee Performance and Engagement

 

The Mission

To assist struggling people managers with a proven, easy-to-use method for performance improvement, talent retention, and employee engagement.

 

Sound Like You?

We get it.  Time is your scarcest resource.  Read through the bullets below to determine if this book addresses your concerns and is worth your time to read. If you resonate with any of these statements – keep reading:

• You are being pressed to both increase production/profit and retain/develop talent. Expectations of you are increasingly unrealistic.
• Time to address people management grows increasingly scarce
• Managing people is messy and time-consuming. Managing production is not. Hence, the focus on production and declining employee engagement.
• You are disappointed at not being able to retain the best or get employees to their potential.
• You are unsure if the problem is you or the employees, and you have no method for uncovering the truth.
• HR is of no help. They keep increasing bureaucratic requirements that take precious time and don’t deliver what is needed.
• To cope, you focus on producing more yourself and pushing your peak performers to do more, burning out both you and your best
• Increasingly, your role as a people manager is dissatisfying.
• You lose the best people and retain the underperformers with no clear solution to improving their performance.

If the above statements don’t resonate with you, this book may not fit your needs.  To continue your success and understand what other managers may be going through you may wish to read Creating High Performers or go to www.thequestionmethod.com for more info on the trends that, if not impacting you now, may in the near-term.

 

A Personal Journey

Despite my graduate degree in management, I dove into supervising others with no training (strangely, it was never covered in grad school).  I went with the “common sense” idea that employees want to perform and only need encouragement and validation to gain confidence.  I had it half right.

Three years in,  I painfully realized that people with great potential failed due to my lack of skills as a supervisor.   I had thought that giving too much direction and evaluation would undermine rather than strengthen confidence and performance. I wanted to avoid micromanagement, and I over-corrected.  The lesson?  It was my performance that needed evaluation and improvement.

I did post-mortems on each of the failures, and developed a list of “must-haves” for employees to succeed. Observing the failures of managers I later coached, the initial list of 3 must-haves became seven (hence the 7 Questions that are the foundation of the earlier book, Creating High Performers).

I began using the 7 Questions to onboard new hires and those promoted to new positions.  I would begin with, “I have learned that there are certain things employees need to be successful.  I don’t want to continue failing those working for me.  So, I am going to ask you a list of 7 Questions to be sure that I provide what I know is needed for success.  The questions involve clarity of direction, standards, feedback, resources and the like.  Please be very honest with me.  I know asking you to evaluate me is unusual, but I can’t improve unless I know  how and then make needed changes myself.”

This approach proved magical for starting an open, honest relationship and for direct reports to achieve success early. I began teaching the checklist in my supervision classes.  Great feedback prompted me to write  Creating High Performers.

After the first book was published, John Gregoire read the book and implemented the questions at his company. He ultimately joined my consulting firm and began working with me to help others implement the concepts in the book. Together we learned from challenges and feedback as we assisted individuals and organizations in implementing the 7 Questions. From this experience the Question Method™ was born.

 

Why It’s Urgent

People management performance continues to decline. Employee engagement is down, the “great resignation” continues, the majority of employees report they will seek other jobs within a year, and “bad bosses” continue as the #1 reason for unwanted resignations.

Conversely, a Gallup study found that engaged teams were 21% more profitable, had 41% less absenteeism,  and experienced 59% less turnover.

Business leaders know all this and, yet, the decline continues, now being accelerated by shifting values about work-life balance.

Given what could be gained by solving this, one wonders, what’s missing here?

 

The Solution

Our take is that although much is written about the “lead from the heart” approach and similar concepts, no one is offering today’s stressed people managers an easy-to-use technique to help them rise to the expectations of servant leadership.

This new book provides an easy-to-understand, actionable method to:

• Understand what you need to do to be successful with each employee
• Gain clarity on where and how to improve performance
• Establish and maintain open, honest relationships that engage employees
• Diagnose the causes of employee underperformance
• Develop needed action plans to optimize performance.
• Partner with employees as they grow their careers and progress within your organization

We’ve been advised to “just get to the heart of the matter”, “just tell me what to do”.  What’s missing is a simple “how to” and that’s what this book delivers.

 

Are You Willing?

Here are some beliefs or practices that will get in the way the Method® working  for you:

1. Onboarding is the responsibility of HR
2. Engagement is a program/responsibility of HR
3. Commitment to and planning for employee development should come after an employee achieves competence and meets basic expectations.
4. To remain impartial and objective, I need to maintain some distance from my direct reports—don’t get too close.

These beliefs, in part, explain why today’s supervision practice is failing. If you have moved on from them, then The Question Method® will deliver for you.

What’s New in This Book

We break the journey to employee potential into three distinct phases:

Phase 1 – Onboarding

Here, the goal is to get the employee up to meeting standards ASAP.  That’s what both of you want.  The original 7 Questions will measure how well you, as a manager,  are doing and what  is needed for success.

Phase 2 – Strengthening Engagement

Are you delivering a pathway for employees to achieve their hopes and aspirations?   Where do you fall short?    Are you building relationships as you go?  Are you monitoring and managing the ups and downs of the journey? Are you able to diagnose and effectively respond to periods of underperformance? Is commitment to the organization, to you, and to the team growing?  If not, why not? How to correct it?

Phase 3- On to the Next Plateau

In Phase 1, you should have defined a long-term aspiration. Now, it is time to proactively map and travel the journey to the employee’s next-level goal.

Challenges and How to Meet Them

The journey of managers we have coached has revealed a pattern of challenges.  We have modified the Method®  to get you through them.

Among the challenges addressed:

• How to avoid bad hires that set you back
• Gaining needed organizational support
• I don’t have enough time
• Overcoming making technical work a priority
• Diagnosing the source of underperformance
• How to solve “Won’t Do” problems
• What to do about the annual evaluation
• Insuring fairness
• Managing employee needs for work-life balance
• Using The Question Method® with remote employees

The Question Method®  is easy to learn and employ.  We have streamlined it to make the best use of your valuable time. Your success depends upon devoting the time on a continuing basis to reach and sustain gains. Ultimately, you will save time by having fewer problems to solve

 

I know #1 and #3 are saying different things and are aimed at different situations, but they are both pointed toward the reader not performing in a management role. I would take out #1 and leave #3. That way if someone really loves people managing, they won’t be scared away from the book by #1, but instead be intrigued on how they can do it better.   Let #1 be addressed in the book where you can give it more explanation – it might be intimidating here for someone new to the role.  My thoughts – dump them as needed!