I'm so frustrated I could scream, Francine blurted out as I stepped into her office for our coaching session. I asked what happened. She explained that her Commercial Director just dropped the ball on a major opportunity. ALSO READ: ‘You got this’ is hard to hear and even harder to say She had asked the Director to cover for her at a monthly meeting with the company’s biggest customer. But the customer used this routine check-in to raise a promising new partnership idea and asked if the Director could come back to them with a proposal. ALSO READ: The risk of not delegating work Guess what the Director said? Francine asked, shaking her head. Tell me, I replied. She said no! She told the client she was too busy preparing papers for our board meeting. Can you believe that? As I helped Francine manage her frustration, I reflected on her bigger challenge: getting her team to lean in when opportunities present themselves in the future. ALSO READ: Automate admin, not trust Many leaders I work with say employees lack initiative, and employees say they don’t feel trusted to act. Addressing this stand-off takes courage on both sides, but leaders hold ultimate responsibility for resolving it. Unfortunately, leaders’ reflexive response to low initiative is often counterproductive. Imagine for a moment that a national football team is playing in the opening match of a regional competition but has had no time to train together. After a few minutes it becomes clear that their opponents are well-prepared and quickly dominate the game. At this point, no amount of shouting from the sidelines is going to help the team win. The national coach will have to keep his composure and take notes about the plays and drills to practise before the next event. What I often see in organisations is that leaders focus their attention on directing play on match day. They prioritise activities that drive short-term performance: things like customer negotiations, pricing and cost control. Their interventions are well intended, but rarely have the impact that they are looking for. And like a football coach shouting from the sidelines, they distract the team from doing their jobs. Leaders can achieve better long-term results by encouraging practices that enhance independent initiative. There are four practices that are particularly impactful: emphasising goals, encouraging development, aligning incentives and normalising feedback. I used to run a sales team, and one of the first things you learn in sales is the importance of repetition. You have to accept that you will get tired of hearing yourself repeating your messages well before your customers can remember them. The best salespeople deliver their messages with the same enthusiasm the hundredth time as they do the first. Leaders have the same responsibility when it comes to articulating goals. It isn’t enough to state your goals at your annual retreat and in your annual plan. You also have to find ways of repeating them throughout the year. Showcasing achievements that exemplify the performance you are looking for can be a powerful way of bringing frequent attention to your goals. Once team members know what their goals are, they must be confident that they will be supported in pursuing them. The easiest part of this is allocating the resources they need to do their work well. Building capabilities is harder. This may require formal training, but most development happens on the job. Team members must be encouraged to take on increasingly complex and risky assignments. For leaders, this requires exquisite patience and tolerance for the inevitable errors and losses that will happen as team members learn the ropes. It is also critical to ensure that employee and organisational incentives are aligned. You cannot ask people to make sacrifices without them knowing why this is in their personal interest. Incentives should also be differentiated. Top talent should see that their interests are closely bound to the organisation’s fortunes. This can be supported by bonuses and other financial rewards, but career progression is the most powerful signal you can send in encouraging high performance. The final practice is normalising feedback. A big challenge that senior leaders face is the unwillingness of team members to share bad news or corrective feedback. This greatly diminishes the quality of data available to guide behaviour and make good decisions. A ritual that can help in encouraging feedback is asking regularly for it, and showing gratitude when it is provided, even when it is negative. When senior leaders model this behaviour, it encourages more candid discussions at lower levels in the organisation. Job ownership grows through the daily experience of work: how people are guided, developed, encouraged and coached. Leaders who embrace the practices outlined here can turn employee initiative from a frustration into a strategic advantage. Christian Sellars is the CEO of Transforming Engagements (TES) Ltd, a Kigali-based consultancy that helps organisations prosper by transforming leadership and culture.
