The hard thing about influencing people.
Why do I need develop a person if that one already knows what is her/his job? This kind of question we asked as a manager and it is hard do our job day by day, I will provide you why develop is more than just to say to people: hey! Why you did not reach “x” target.
As a leader you notice that every person that you work with it is “literally a different whole world”. When I start to work with Maurice, in my hierarchy was assigned, his result was not impressive if I compare with his peers. For me, trying to figure out what is going on with him was crucial.
I scheduled weekly an individual session to do two things, first, connect with him and then, get the root causes and start a development plan that we can work on the next month. I remember the first session so well.
I asked to him about what his personal interest are and get to know each other. Hobbies, favourite movies, favourite marvel´s character, preferred music were topics that we discussed, and we started to connect. He was shy and a person with short words.
As a practical exercises, we started to listen some calls and do reflection sessions where we can think about what went well and what we can do better the next time. His responses were like “x process I cannot do due to policies are hard for customers”, “this process is hard, and I cannot do x thing”. Once of those arguments was “I am not an enough positive person or had a great tone of voice that sounds confident in order to influence the customer´s perception”.
Then, I replied to him, “tell me more about your tone of voice”. He replied, “yep, there is nothing that I can do, if I compare with Andrea’s tone of voice (a Maurice´s peer), people love a person that the tone of voice sounds warm, I am not like that”. In my mind I think, “his intention is getting better and maybe his frustration was if I am not a good speaker like others, I cannot reach the company´s goals, if I reach the goals, I need to be a different person that I am not”
That fear or struggling I noticed. I took a moment to breath deeply, I clarified my thoughts and I said to him, “this process is not about you being or acting like someone else, it is about to develop and build your best version”.
Maurice keeps quiet and I mentioned, “If you keep comparing yourself with other people that have different skills you are going to feeling bad. Let´s listen this call and please, tell me or think about what are the good highlights that you did” We listened the call and he mentioned just one.
Maybe you just see one, what do you about “x, y and z” thing that you did? His answer was, I did not notice. I recognized those efforts and we put practical exercises per week and having one-one’s sessions.
After 2 months doing this, he became one of the top performers on my team. Even, he started to influence his peers being a point of contact in a crucial key indicator, generating new ideas to reach the goal as an individual contributor and motivate his peers to iterate ideas and keep reaching the goals.
This happened almost 2 years ago, in a time when pandemic crises stole our hopes, family members and dreams. After 2 years, I see the Maurice´s development, became a point of contact on my team. Recently he joined a training specialist program. A great program when that he will keep developing people.
When I reflect on Maurice´s experience, I am proud of him, because his example it is just one of the successful 10 examples that I can count. People already knows what the tasks, functions and goals are.
As a manager is crucial to think that our approach can build or destroyed someone else’s confidence and let a remarkable experience in his/her life. That is why we must ask ourselves “what is behind “x” behaviour/result? What can I do to develop that person?” with this, we can influence people, develop his/her best version. At the end, the people will remember how you was crucial on his/her development and how you believed even when someone else’s didn’t it.
