4
STEP 4: IMPROVE YOUR TEAM’s EFFECTIVENESS THROUGH COACHING
A leader’s primary responsibility is to create an environment in which our employees can successfully complete their work.
One area in which CFOs and controllers must enhance their skills is in developing a strong and supportive team. In this step, we explore five best practices that enable the CFO to build a such a team. Each practice is one dimension of the overall theme of teaming. Today, CEOs highly value controllers and CFOs who have the ability to develop a cohesive team around them.
After reading this chapter, you should be able to
employ specific tools that turn a department into a real team.
apply specific strategies that foster individual accountability.
evaluate if your recognition efforts support behaviours that create collaboration.
use feedback to build star performers.
help employees be more effective so you can lead better.
THE VALUE OF TEAMING IN FINANCE
Teaming is the way that work gets done today.
Like it or not, our work has become a series of projects. Closing the month-end is a project. Getting ready for the audit is a project. Implementing the new cost system is a project. The controller and CFO who sees the accounting function as a series of projects can easily apply the concept of teaming as a way of getting the work done more effectively, while enhancing employees’ productivity. Because the accounting department really is an information business, the best way to get work done smoothly requires employees to be able to easily communicate to one another and arrive at decisions quickly. Teaming, as an operating style, uses consensus as a way of making decisions that benefit everyone.
No longer can the head of accounting be the type of person who sits in the office oblivious to what is going on outside the door. The CFO is an equal and participating member of his or her team. Not understanding this imperative will be detrimental to your career because CEOs value the manager who is a dedicated team builder. If your CEO sees that you lack the ability to build and lead a strong team, he or she will quickly replace you with someone who can.
Here are two more realities of being the leader of the finance team to keep in mind as we explore these four best practices.
Reality No. 1—The success and failure of any team ultimately is dependent on the quality of its leadership.
Reality No. 2—Leadership is more about the people you lead than it is about you. If you do not know how to lead, you will be unable to tap into and bring forth the full potential of your team.
The CFO as Developer of Team’s Skills and Talents
A person who achieves results as a leader of a small team will supersede the leader without results who is leading hundreds. Whether you are a leader-manager or a leader-executive, you need people. This is why every leader must strive to foster interdependence.
However, you will never create an attitude of interdependence until each team member and you fully become accountable, which leads to reliability and competence.
Exercise: Is This Your Management Accounting Team?
I enter your management accounting department with a problem. You are at your desk, and I present you with my tale of woe.
Which of these answers will I get from you?
1. ______ “That’s not my area. Come back when Lin is around.”
2. ______ “Send an e-mail to Lin when you get back to your desk. If I remember, I will tell her you stopped by.”
3. ______ “I will have Lin call you.”
4. ______ “Give that to me. I will make sure it gets resolved and one of us will get back to you no later than tomorrow morning.”
If you checked “4” you have an understanding of interdependence and you act in ways conducive to a capable CFO.
However, do not congratulate yourself yet. Here are two key questions to answer.
Does everyone on your team practice interdependence?
Would each individual on your team provide me with answer 4?
In Essence
Accounting is a team concept and not an independent function. The work needs to get done regardless of who does it. As CFO, you must build an interdependent team whose sole focus is to satisfy the needs of every one of management accounting’s customers.
Remind your team often of the following:
No matter how important you are, remember that an organisation does not depend on the efforts of any one person.
Exercise: Brian—part 3
Your task is to take the following two actions:
Read the following information about best practice areas.
Read the section “About Your Friend Brian,” who needs your assistance so he can be successful as a CFO.
Best Practices
1. Shape Your Employees’ Teaming Behaviours with a Solid Structure
Main question:
What cultural structure will Brian need in place so that he can focus more on the big picture, yet know that things will get done? What should his overall strategy be?
Specific questions:
What does Brian need to be aware of?
What specific tactics should Brian employ over the next year?
What will Brian need to measure to know that he is effective?
Refer to figures 4-1 and 4-2.
2. Shape Your Employees’ Accountability by Establishing Behaviour Expectations
Main question:
What sorts of standards must Brian instil so that his team delivers quality, timeliness and confidentiality? What should his overall strategy be?
Specific questions:
What does Brian need to be aware of?
What specific tactics should Brian employ over the next year?
What will Brian need to measure to know that he is effective?
Refer to figures 4-4 and 4-5.
3. Shape Your Employees’ Behaviour by Using Honest Feedback
Main question:
How can Brian use frequent feedback to change or improve employees’ behaviours? What should his overall strategy be?
Specific questions:
What does Brian need to be aware of?
What specific tactics should Brian employ over the next year?
What will Brian need to measure to know that he is effective?
4. Shape Your Employees’ Behaviour with Recognition and Rewards
Main question:
What sorts of behaviours does Brian need to recognise and reward and what could the rewards look like? What should his overall strategy be?
Specific questions:
What does Brian need to be aware of?
What specific tactics should Brian employ over the next year?
What will Brian need to measure to know that he is effective?
About Your Friend Brian
Brian is still working through his challenges with his employer, R & K Enterprises. It is now time to face up to those people who Brian relies on if he is to be more effective in his existing role.
The following single issue contributes to Brian’s inability to delegate many of his responsibilities to other employees.
Issue 9: Employees Lack Professionalism
R & K is situated in a small community, so there are few well-paying jobs except for those with the businesses that R & K owns. Despite this fact, several of the management accounting employees act like Brian or R & K owes them something. Many individuals treat coworkers with disdain. Another group has a hard time getting to work on time or lets their personal lives take precedence over their work obligations.
Even though the shared-services concept was launched long before Brian was hired, the employees in each discipline have yet to commit to this structure. Most define themselves by their specialty and many silos have formed within the department.
The members of the shared-services group physically located in the business units use the excuse “Corporate is making me do this” whenever they must enforce a policy. They blame Brian whenever they do something that upsets their managing director, which is quite often.
All R & K employees not in management, except for Brian’s team, receive regular semi-annual performance evaluations. HR felt that the new controller should take this project on.
BEST PRACTICE: SHAPE YOUR EMPLOYEES’ TEAMING BEHAVIOURS WITH A SOLID STRUCTURE
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed is it the only thing that has.”
—Margaret Mead
The Teaming Culture
Your goal is to foster a team, as esteemed researcher Margaret Mead describes, that can be counted on to change the world with the work they perform. As the trends in chapter 7, “Step 61/2: Improve by Making a Commitment,” demonstrate, you likely have fewer resources available to you to get the job done in a timely and productive manner. This is why you must work to develop a teaming culture within your department. The teaming culture is one in which every member is a fully participating peer who has equal say in the decisions and whose contribution is valued. A team is more than just a group of people who have been thrown together in a room or set of cubicles. The team, to be successful, must be made up of members who own these two attitudes:
If the team is to succeed, I must do everything in my power to make that happen.
If I fail to deliver, then the team suffers and I let down my team.
In the teaming culture the team is only as strong as the weakest performer. Therefore, a true team works together to raise the performance of every member, so there are no substandard performers.
Interdependence Defined
Television and movie versions of Star Trek have always fascinated me because of their characters. In every version of this visionary franchise, the characters struggle to figure out how to work and function interdependently. Despite the fact that each character has a role (for instance, captain, engineer, officer or ensign), they realise they cannot survive the rigours of space without cooperation with one another and coverage for the person in distress.
As the leader of the finance team, you have many tools available to foster and support a teaming culture of interdependence. A CFO always implements the following three tools first.
Team Vision
Your team’s vision is a definable destination that your group strives to reach sometime in the future. You, as the leader, set the vision that flows from the entire organisation’s vision. If any incongruence exists between the team’s and the organisation’s vision, you will have difficulties in determining which of the two takes priority.
Team Mission
Your team’s mission is an uplifting, inspiring statement about who your group is and why it exists. Again, you as the leader take the lead on developing the team’s mission, but you also include the input and ideas of team members. For them to buy into the mission and support it, each member needs to feel that his or her input helped to determine what the team is all about.
Study samples of actual team missions as outlined in figure 4-1. They will serve as examples in developing a mission for your own team. Some are humourous, which helps to energise members.
Figure 4-1: Examples of Team Visions and Missions
Team Structure
As explained previously in this section, you do not create a team by putting a bunch of people together and declaring, “We are now a team.” The group must have a structure to help support behaviours that foster a teaming culture. The following items are often neglected or overlooked when a group, such as management accounting, attempts to evolve from a department to a team:
Rewards for high quality service and for behaviours benefiting teaming and professionalism
Rewards that recognise individual contribution
Rewards that recognise the entire team for their combined efforts
Penalties and consequences for behaviours detrimental to teaming and professionalism
Communications systems
Work-tracking methodology
Attendance requirements (if you regularly have work and staff meetings)
Meeting formats (if you regularly have work and staff meetings)
Agendas (if you regularly have work and staff meetings)
Standards for behaviour (for instance, ground rules)
Participation requirements and standards
Planning ahead methodology
Ways to have fun
Diversity
In order to succeed in the long term, the team must be able to accommodate and handle diversity in a professional manner. This type of diversity has nothing to do with heritage; it has to do with differences in how each person perceives the world. The team will mature as it discovers how to incorporate the diversity of the following items, while capitalising on those differences when it comes to making decisions, setting goals and rewarding itself. Team success requires diverse
opinions,
experiences, and
personalities.
The Team’s Decisions Are Made by Consensus
To have a true team culture, all major decisions must be made by consensus. This is difficult to do given the nature of the person who is attracted to management accounting and the diversity previously described. Nevertheless, creating a team culture in which consensus is honoured, valued and used is relatively easy once you understand what it is and how it works.
There is tremendous misunderstanding about what consensus is, because we all have participated in groups that attempted to build consensus and were not able to. Let us start by reviewing definitions of consensus. The first is the most difficult to instil in people because it means that when you are on a team, you must let go of your individual ego.
Team Consensus Defined
Consensus is an acknowledgement that the team is more valuable that the individual.
Consensus is the process of everyone sharing their thoughts before deciding. Consensus is getting everyone’s input and concerns. Consensus is making a decision that will move the team ahead. When it comes to creating consensus, the most critical aspect is to proactively get every person’s concerns and feelings on the table long before the decision is made. What often undermines consensus is that the people involved in the decision were not heard or their opinion was not valued. Then the person becomes distressed and is unable to support the decision. When you do take into serious consideration everyone’s opinion, no matter how difficult or challenging, you will arrive at a decision that everyone can support, even if it goes against what someone wants.
Consensus is fully supporting each team decision 110 %.
The last part of the definition of consensus is the most critical to building a team culture. This means that after the decision is made no member of the team can downgrade its importance. Because this degree of support for a decision is rare, some managers and executives do not believe in consensus. What universally happens is that a decision that affects many people is made by a few without the input of those affected. This is a pitfall you want to avoid.
As before, let us examine the polar opposite definition. Consensus is not any of the following:
100% agreement
Agreement by majority vote
Imposed by the leader
Impossible
More Characteristics of Consensus
As the consensus spectrum in figure 4-2 illustrates, consensus is not making decisions by dictum or directive. It is also not making decisions by majority rule. And consensus is not 100% agreement. On the decision spectrum, consensus is between making decisions by majority rule and 100% agreement. In every major decision, at least one person will disagree or believe another way of solving the problem exists.
Figure 4-2: Consensus Spectrum
The goal of consensus is to enable the team members who disagree to buy into the solution or decision by incorporating their ideas and concerns. In doing so, the outcome is one that they can support because it addresses what they are most concerned about.
Another pitfall to avoid when seeking consensus is the situation in which the leader has already made up his or her mind, lets the team discuss the issue, and then makes the final decision he or she wanted all along. This is not only a waste of time, it is something that many of us have experienced in the past and has added to our mistrust of consensus.
Questions the leader asks of the team before it decides will enable team members to support the final decision or outcome.
“How will the customer be best served? “
“Will this action or decision move us toward our goal?”
“What can everyone agree to? “
“If we don’t act or decide, what will likely happen? “
Teams use consensus to decide on important issues such as the following:
Resolving conflict
Format for meetings
Consequences for not living up to the team’s standards
Rewards
Communication methods
Tracking work and the progress made towards team and individual goals
Attendance requirements at meetings
Acceptable participation levels
Process for getting honest input that will lead to consensus
How to Create a Strong Team
Time and patience are the two most important ingredients that the CFO puts into the mix in order to create a strong team. The group of employees that you wish to become a real team needs time to practise their teaming skills. It is very difficult to let go of our individual identity so that we can work on a collective one.
Along with time, you need to give your team members lots of room to make mistakes as they learn how to work together as one unit. This is when patience comes in. The following are the hallmarks of a team that works well together. Notice that they use the specific tools mentioned earlier, such as a shared vision and a common mission.
Characteristics of an Interdependent Management Accounting Team
Shared vision
Clear mission
Recognition of one another’s contributions
Clearly defined roles
Mutual accountability
Team-based rewards
An attitude of “We win together or we lose together but we choose to win.”
Eight Team Principles
For your team to share your vision, it must be compelling and exciting to them.
A shared vision ensures that we are moving toward the same ultimate destination.
To communicate your mission, you must be able to define it yourself and for each team member.
Making employees feel important creates a strong, loyal team.
A clear mission enables employees to believe in the value of their work.
To create a clear mission, everyone in your group should feel involved in creating it.
An uplifting mission carries us through times of confusion.
The team is only as strong as the weakest member.
10½ Rules About Building Effective Teams
Teams are shaped, not delegated.
Team attitude is developed, not dictated.
Your customer does not care about titles, rules, responsibilities or hierarchy.
Customers want their needs met.
Customers see a department or team as one unit.
The more mistakes the team makes, the faster it learns to do it right.
Teams need specific milestones to measure their progress to work as one.
Whenever a team member delivers bad service, this act poorly reflects upon the entire team.
Whenever a team member delivers good service, this act reflects well on the person, not the team—unless this member gives specific credit to the team.
The team leader’s purpose is to replace himself or herself by giving every member the opportunity to serve as the team’s leader.
10½. A team is only as strong as its weakest member.
There are two additional best practices that interdependent teams rely on to be effective and cohesive:
Culture statement
Behaviour standards
In the End
To all of management accounting’s customers, each of you is an interchangeable part.
The controller or CFO who wishes to build a cohesive group that supports each another and function as one unit without the need to be closely managed must look to the process of team-building to enable the group to work as one. Teams can be successfully developed if you facilitate the group in creating their own tools, structure, value system and the standards that help them to foster their own team culture.
Exercise: signs of Interdependence in Management Accounting
Now envision the work you perform as seen through the eyes of your customer. Customers do not distinguish between an AP specialist and a GL clerk. They know that an employee works in management accounting and that they need this team to solve their problem. You can easily verify if a team has an attitude of interdependence by the following hallmarks. Whenever a group truly is interdependent, every employee on the team adopts the following attitudes and models the related behaviour.
Instructions
Only check “yes” for a trait if everyone you serve would say your team exhibits it regularly.
TRAIT OR ATTITUDE |
WOULD OUR CUSTOMERS SAY THIS IS TRUE FOR MY TEAM? |
||
EACH DAY... |
YES |
NO |
UNSURE |
Every one of us can and will help any customer. |
|||
We cover for the person who is out. |
|||
We trust each other. |
|||
We know we can rely on each other. |
|||
Every goal is our goal. |
|||
Everyone’s priority is the team’s priority. |
|||
We regularly share what everyone one is working on. |
|||
We assist the person who has more work than time. |
|||
Even when the leader is out, we make decisions and make things happen. |
|||
We share resources and ideas. |
|||
We strengthen the weakest link on the team. |
|||
We never cover up our mistakes. |
|||
We focus on solutions rather than on blame. |
|||
We hold one another accountable to the standards. |
|||
We share the credit for our success. |
|||
We win together or we lose together, but we choose winning. |
|||
Answer Key
13-16 “yes” responses: You have a great team.
Less than 13 “yes” responses: You have some work to do. Pay close attention to the tools in this chapter.
CFO Lesson
You cannot lead a group to be a real team unless you create the path.
BEST PRACTICE: SHAPE YOUR EMPLOYEES’ ACCOUNTABILITY BY ESTABLISHING BEHAVIOUR EXPECTATIONS
When your employees know how to act because you have made it clear to them, they will make their own decisions without asking permission and direction.
Expectations and Standards Shape Behaviours
Behaviours that are measured get attention. Once you determine the culture and behaviours you want and expect, you must be able to honour them. Clear expectations in the form of team ground rules and a culture statement are excellent tools to define the standards for employee behaviour. Rules about work reinforce the values identified in your culture statement.
The most important step in the learning curve of people figuring out how to work as a team is how well they enforce holding each other accountable. This is when the leader sets the tone for the rest of the team by encouraging each member to be watchful when someone does break a ground rule or standard and immediately lets the person know. Standards only work well when the offenders understand that they will be immediately notified about failing to adhere to one.
More Accountability Principles
Leadership and teamwork go hand in hand. One is fully dependent on the other.
The great leader creates the environment in which his or her followers can win too.
Employees always model their leaders’ behaviours.
Power of Expectations
When you provide and communicate a clear, high expectation to someone, the person will almost always rise to the occasion. The reason that employees are not accountable is that their leaders do not communicate what they expect of them. To be accountable you need to know what you are accountable to and responsible for. Whenever you ask an employee to live up to a standard that only you know about, you have manipulated, not led.
One reason that an employee fails to meet a standard is that you have set the bar too high or too low. A second reason is that you have not made the standard clear, have not provided the reason for it or are not living the standard.
Your Role in Fostering Accountability
It Starts on Their First Day
The day you clearly communicate the standards that will make your team and each member succeed starts their first day on the job or on your team. You can jump-start a commitment to accountability when you explain your expectations during the interview process.
Suppose a job candidate discovers that he or she must be accountable and live up to high expectations in order to be part of the team. If the candidate lacks this attitude and commitment, he or she will often screen himself out. Once the employee is on the team, constant reminders about the team’ high standards will ensure those behaviours get written into the script about which actions are appropriate.
Cultural Objectivity
When an employee has become part of the culture story, it is hard for him or her to be objective about it. When you become inured to your own culture, you no longer notice those actions that undermine mutual accountability.
Principle of Inculturalisation
Every organisation experiences the Principle of Inculturalisation.
Nothing is more frustrating for a supervisor than having employees who are focused on their paycheck, not their responsibilities. If employees are focused on “what’s in it for me” in terms of their paycheck and benefits, they will not have sufficient time left to satisfy their customer, internal or external. Yet, what many leaders do not realise is that they create this situation.
Inculturalisation Defined
Inculturalisation is the point when the employee becomes indoctrinated into the culture and loses objectivity. It is the transition time when the employees are now part of the story, playing their role in fulfilling it.
What Employees Expect Today
What employees desire, more than a paycheck, is an employer that practises supportive cultural norms so that employees
are clearly supported by their supervisor.
receive recognition for their efforts.
receive regular coaching on where they stand and what they can do to improve their performance.
are allowed to be involved and have a voice in their goals and the team’s direction.
are granted empowerment and freedom to do their job as they see fit.
see that accountability standards are enforced upon everyone.
receive feedback on their performance.
In other words, loyal, contributing and caring employees demand to be treated as human beings and not machines or disposable items.
Inculturalising Starts on Their First Day
On day one, when an employee is hired, their main measurement of worth to you and your commitment to the employee becomes his or her paycheck and benefits. As time passes, the employee’s attention naturally turns toward his or her responsibilities.
Then, at a specific foreseeable point in time, the employee becomes part of the culture and his or her attitude may change.
Point of No Return
The CFO wants employees to focus on their responsibilities and services to their customers. If cultural norms do not provide the supportive environment that today’s employees demand, they will develop a mercenary attitude and use their paycheck as a measurement of their worth and your commitment to their success. Once this point is reached in your work relationship, it is almost impossible to change the employee’s attitude. Despite the hundreds of management books written each year on how to reverse the rise and trend of this mercenary attitude, employees rarely alter their focus from their paycheck back to their responsibilities, even after the culture norms improve.
Leaders’ and Supervisors’ Contribution
As a leader and supervisor, you create the environment and write the story your employees enact each day. Therefore, you control whether or not employees develop a mercenary attitude.
CFO Tool: Culture Statement
The best way to develop a behaviour standard by declaring your culture story is at a team retreat. People can brainstorm the types of ideas they believe will enable the team to effectively work together and hold each other accountable. If your employees help create the culture story, they will buy into it willingly.
Figure 4-3 lists the defined culture story that Success Unlimited’s finance team adopted years ago.
Figure 4-3: Success Unlimited Management Accounting Teams’ Culture Statement
CFO Tool: Ground Rules
Just as in developing a culture statement, the optimal way to develop a behaviour standard is at a team retreat. People can brainstorm the types of ground rules or standards that will enable the team to effectively work together and hold each other accountable. Start the process by focusing on specific behaviours that are undermine team members’ effectiveness. Then ask “What rule will prevent this behaviour from taking place?” Turn their responses into a specific ground rule.
Figure 4-4 lists the ground rules that Success Unlimited’s accounting team adopted years ago and holds each other accountable to.
Figure 4-4: Success Unlimited Finance Team Ground Rules or Standards
CFO Tool: Service Standards
The customer service standard statement is a powerful tool that enables the CFO to help employees understand what is expected of them as they take on new challenges and responsibilities. Organisations that are committed to providing high quality service have one for the teams that provide service to the external customer. This definition helps to ensure that the employees adopt an attitude of service.
What works well externally also works well internally.
By working with your team and establishing 5-10 service standards, you can develop one that guides employees’ contributions each day. Figure 4-5 provides Success Unlimited’s customer service standards that guide the actions and behaviours of its management accounting team.
Figure 4-5: Success Unlimited Customer Service Standards for Finance
In the End
“People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”
—Jim Collins, Good to Great
It is the leader’s job to clearly communicate what he or she wants from each employee in terms of commitments and behaviours. All too often, CFOs and controllers only address the measurable behaviours around the technical work they do, and they fail to address the soft attitudes that can undermine all other efforts.
As CFO, you can swiftly influence your team and others outside the team to behave in certain appropriate ways. Accountability can only be enhanced when the standard and expectations are made clear to every employee, all employees buy into them, and deviations from the standards are addressed swiftly.
You now have three specific tools to use that strengthen the team’s accountability almost immediately.
Exercise: How Well Do You clarify expectations?
Instructions
Imagine yourself as you go through your workday and truthfully answer how frequently you perform these types of leadership activities.
DO YOU: |
EVERYDAY |
OFTEN |
SOMETIMES |
RARELY |
1. Clarify each person’s role and how it fits into the big picture? |
||||
2. Address any employee’s inappropriate behaviour immediately? |
||||
3. Compliment or support positive behaviours immediately? |
||||
4. Support those employees who do things appropriately? |
||||
5. Enable employees to solve their own problems? |
||||
6. Take a colleague to task who acts in an unaccountable manner? |
||||
7. Check with others to determine if you are seen as reliable and accountable? |
||||
8. Set clear expectations for how everyone on your team must behave, including yourself? |
||||
9. Address the problem whenever someone does not live up to those expectations immediately? |
Answer Key
If most of your responses are not in the “every day” or “often” columns, then you are not helping to embed accountability into your team’s DNA. It takes a lot of courage and awareness to address those instances in which an employee does not to live up to defined expectations and standards.
If most of your responses were in the “sometimes” or “rarely” columns then you need to step up and perform these actions more often. Each time you do not address an inappropriate behaviour or support a positive one, you weaken the fabric of accountability both in your team and your organisation.
BEST PRACTICE: SHAPE YOUR EMPLOYEES’ BEHAVIOUR BY USING HONEST FEEDBACK
Power of Immediate Feedback
In order to ensure that an employee or colleague behaves in ways that are supportive, you must work on establishing specific consequences whenever a person, even you, does not live up to expectations or disobeys a policy.
Two Consequence Principles
A person’s behaviour is determined by the consequences that immediately follow any particular behaviour.
Immediate feedback is a powerful consequence.
The most powerful way to alter a person’s behaviour is through immediate consequence in the form of feedback. The longer the space between the behaviour and the feedback, the less likely the employee will change. Feedback that immediately arrives after the behaviour greatly increases the likelihood the behaviour will be altered or reinforced.
Delaying to address, condoning or ignoring a behaviour are consequences that reward an employee’s behaviour. With an underperformer, each time you choose to delay, condone or ignore the behaviour you are rewarding that behaviour.
Alternatively, if an employee behaves in a way that you want to change, you must immediately call it to the attention of the employee and do so as soon as you notice it. You will see employees gain awareness of specific actions and change his or her behaviour for the better.
What Feedback Is and Is Not
Feedback is the truth about an employee as his or her manager sees it. From the employee’s point of view, feedback means the difference between being in the dark and knowing where he or she stands. Feedback allows employees to see if they are who they believe themself to be. It provides employees with tangible information on how they are doing. Feedback is the favourite tool of successful coaches and leaders because it creates two-way dialogue with employees.
If feedback is driven by fear, employees will avoid it, anxious that you will punish them. To be an effective coach, you must build the habit of giving feedback when the employee does things right. The CFO all too frequently ignores positive actions and decisions and gives feedback only when the employee errs. Feedback is not criticism. Criticism is exactly what you give when you only notice incorrect behaviours and do not comment on correct ones.
Feedback can significantly affect motivation when the employee expects to receive it immediately. Feedback is best used when it is given daily, because daily doses of feedback will maintain the high performance level of your star performers. People want, crave and desire feedback. Feedback appeals to our human motivators of accomplishment and inner satisfaction.
In the absence of specific feedback, people invent their own performance standards. The only time people know what you are thinking is when you tell them. Silence leaves employees trying to figure out what is on your mind, and 99.9% of the time they are wrong.
Principle of Positive Consequences
If you spot a new behaviour that you would like the employee to continue, you must immediately call it to the attention of the employee and do so as soon as you notice it. You will see that employees are aware of their actions and that they will repeat the behaviour.
If you are not in the habit of providing daily feedback, it is necessary to boost your own confidence in giving feedback. When giving feedback is designed to improve performance, it is acceptable to use a model to guide you.
How to Keep Feedback Objective
Another reason people fear feedback is because they do not understand the difference between judging and describing. Much feedback is purely a judgement call on the giver’s part. Your goal as coach and team leader is to identify those behaviours you would like employees to repeat and those that you want employees to alter or improve. This means that you must be able to clearly describe the specific behaviour to the employee and explain the positive or negative aspects of the behaviour without any biases. The following explains the difference between judging and describing.
Difference Between Judging and Describing
“I don’t think you have the right attitude.” |
This is a judgement statement of another person based on your beliefs or biases. |
“I saw you ignore Tom’s request for help. Your job requires that you support Tom in his work.” |
This is a describing statement explaining what you objectively observed without expressing an opinion. |
Types of Feedback
As mentioned earlier, managers frequently use feedback as criticism. This chart describes the four types of feedback, starting with silence. Even if you never give verbal feedback to employees, they still observe you to get some sense of what you think about their performance. Thus, even in silence you communicate to your employees. The other three are the more proactive forms of feedback, including the one that accountants fear the most: positive feedback. Members of the accounting profession, including those in public accounting, CFOs, and controllers, prefer silence, negative or neutral feedback. Figure 4-6 shows the comparison and effect of each type.
Figure 4-6: Four Types of Feedback
TYPE |
ITS PURPOSE |
ITS IMPACT ON THE EMPLOYEE |
SILENCE No feedback at all |
To maintain status quo |
Diminishes confidence Unclarified expectations Creates surprise at reviews Creates paranoia and avoidance Fosters low accountability |
CRITICISM Negative feedback |
To stop undesirable performance or behaviour that does not meet a predefined standard |
Generates excuses and blame Eliminates positive behaviour Decreases confidence Leads to escapism, avoidance Damages relationships |
ADVICE Neutral feedback |
To identify valued behaviours or results and specify how to use them or to shape behaviours |
Improves confidence Improves relationship Increases performance Clarifies expectations |
REINFORCEMENT Positive feedback |
To identify behaviour or results already demonstrated and shape the continued use of them for increased performance |
Increases confidence Improves performance Reinforces existing behaviours Taps into motivation Fosters full accountability |
What Feedback Does
Honours competence and reinforces behaviour
Helps align expectations and priorities
Fills gaps in people’s knowledge
Inform employees about problems to correct
Alleviates fear of the unknown
Fosters open communications
Builds trust
Rewards top performers
Creates consequences for poor performers
Establishes expectations and standards
Creates a professional atmosphere
Improves interdependence
How Leaders Use Feedback
They just do it.
They change unacceptable behaviour.
They reinforce positive behaviour.
They frequently and intimately give feedback.
They focus it on the customer (internal or external).
They find ways around the system if the culture does not value feedback.
They first build a foundation with the person.
They understand the difference between judging and describing.
They give feedback on what is objective, that is, observable.
The Leader’s Attitude Is Critical
The leader’s attitude toward receiving feedback significantly affects their employee’s attitude toward receiving feedback. We have all received criticism disguised as feedback. We knew that when the boss said, “Can I give you some feedback?” we would be chastised for something. If you do not believe in giving positive and neutral feedback, your employees will not either. If you believe in giving positive and neutral feedback and practise it daily, your employees will follow your example and give supportive feedback to one another.
Most leaders believe they do a good job of giving feedback. In reality, there is a huge discrepancy in getting and receiving feedback. The manager believes, “I am good at giving and asking for feedback and I listen to my employees.” Employees say all too frequently, “I do not receive any feedback on how I am doing.” and “No one listens to my feedback.” The cause of this gap is the leader’s ego, followed by the leader’s hubris. Leaders need confidence in ourselves to make tough decisions and be accountable. But soon we believe our own press and think we never make mistakes or say the wrong thing. This is what creates a feedback gap. It is why you must jump-start the culture of feedback by seeking it for yourself from each member of your team.
How Feedback Uncovers Performance Problems Quickly
The following list provides some examples of hidden reasons why your employee may not be performing as expected. Notice how many would be uncovered by a daily dose of feedback given to the employee. Notice how many would linger if you waited for the annual performance evaluation to address the employee’s performance. The employee
does not know why he or she should do it.
does not know how to do it.
does not know what he or she is supposed to do.
thinks your way will not work.
thinks his or her way is better.
thinks something else is more important.
thinks no positive consequences exist for doing it.
is rewarded for not doing it.
is punished for doing what he or she is supposed to do.
anticipates negative consequences for doing it.
thinks no negative consequences exist for poor performance.
has obstacles beyond his or her control.
thinks personal limitations prevent him or her from performing.
thinks no one can do it.
When and Where to Use Feedback
Feedback does not begin the moment an employee does something wrong.
It commences the day the employee starts working for you. The more you can provide feedback in the early stages of an employee’s employment, the quicker you will shorten his or her learning curve and mould the employee into the star performer you believe he or she can be. In addition to orientation and training, the following are areas in which it is critical for you as a leader and coach to provide ongoing and supportive feedback:
Orienting and training new employees
Teaching a new set of job skills
Explaining the standards of the department or unit
Explaining cultural norms or political realities
Correcting undesirable performance
Changing goals or business conditions
Adjusting to a new team
Assisting employees in unfamiliar work experiences
Helping new employees set priorities
Following up on important training sessions
Dealing with an employee with declining performance
Reinforcing good performance
Encouraging superior performance
Conducting informal performance reviews
Preparing employees to meet their future career goals
Preparing employees for more challenging work assignments
Building an employee’s self-confidence
Providing an emotional pick-me-up for an employee
Building the team’s cohesiveness in order to address conflict or power issues
Leadership development programmes
Five Feedback Principles
The leader’s primary concern is: Why do people resist attempts to adopt a different behaviour pattern?
The key to improving performance is to alter the person’s behaviour.
People have an implicit cost-benefit analysis they use in any attempt to change their behaviour.
People refuse to change when they see that the change will cost them more than it will benefit them.
Employees create a psychological contract with their employer that implicitly and explicitly defines the terms of the exchange they expect. Employees fight when you change the terms of that psychological contract.
10½ Rules for Performance Improving Feedback
Observe the person in action.
Know what the proper behaviour is.
Identify the business reasons and use customer-based data.
Obtain the person’s approval before proceeding.
Focus on the future.
Put feedback into a context the person can understand.
Remove anything that creates barriers and generates resistance.
Write descriptions of what the person is doing and what you want him or her to do. Be specific.
Discuss your feedback in private.
Allow plenty of time and keep it limited.
10½. Delay and you will never get improved performance.
In the End
In the absence of feedback, the employee creates his own standard of performance.
As a supervisor who wants to have a team of star performers, you must get in the habit of using feedback daily. Daily feedback results in quick improvements in performance when it is
timely,
caring, and
honest.
The biggest benefit of using frequent feedback, especially the supportive and neutral type, is that you will be able to shape behaviours quickly. You will spot and alter the ones that harm productivity, quality or service and reinforce the behaviours that build interdependence as well as support productivity, quality or service.
Exercise: Are You a champion?
Instructions
In each of the situations below answer “yes” only if this statement describes you in the workplace setting.
PART 1: |
YES |
NO |
I spend a few minutes each day or each week with each employee providing them with specific feedback on how I see their performance. |
||
During performance evaluations there are no surprises because I have kept each employee apprised as to how well they have been performing their job responsibilities and their level of commitment to our team. |
||
PART 2: |
YES |
NO |
When an employee offers to provide me a critique or feedback on something I have done that affects them, I say “yes” and carefully listen to what is on their mind without being defensive. |
||
If an employee provides me information through feedback I almost always take it to heart because there is a lesson in it for me. |
||
PART 3: |
YES |
NO |
I do not wait for my scheduled performance evaluation to seek out information on how my performance is perceived by my managers and colleagues. |
||
I am open to any suggestions on how I can approve improve my own performance, especially from those who are at my level or above me. |
Answer Key
If a majority of your answers were “yes” in all three parts, then you believe in the power of feedback. Pay closer attention to the results that you immediately get after providing supportive feedback to someone. Notice also if you react or behave differently after receiving feedback. Teach others in your organisation about the importance of feedback.
If a majority of your answers were “no,” you need to improve your commitment to providing timely feedback and obtaining it from others.
CFO Lesson
Without ongoing truthful feedback you create your own standards of performance and so do your employees.
BEST PRACTICE: SHAPE YOUR EMPLOYEES’ BEHAVIOUR WITH RECOGNITION AND REWARDS
You must reinforce team behaviours to make them permanent.
Why Rewards and Recognition Foster Team Behaviours
It is important to reward individuals, and especially the team, when they deliver great service to those they serve. Behaviours that are rewarded are guaranteed to be repeated. You must always recognise every team member’s contributions, especially when someone they serve acknowledges receiving great service or support.
Rewards Defined
Rewards that employees value most are those that clearly demonstrate recognition for their contributions. Too many managers and supervisors automatically think of monetary incentives or bonuses whenever the subject comes up. There are numerous ways of rewarding an employee for positive contributions besides giving them some cash. When given with sincerity and care, employees value simple things such as
a thank-you card.
recognition in the company newsletter.
a pat on the back or a handshake.
a handwritten note of thanks.
acknowledging their contribution in a team meeting.
certificate of appreciation.
a small gift such as a gift certificate.
being treated to lunch at the company’s expense.
special team events such as a pizza party or a bowling night.
time off.
a better parking space.
As leader of a team, avoid the habit of thinking that cash is the only reward or incentive available to you, which soon becomes the path of least resistance. Yes, employees do enjoy receiving an unexpected gift of money. However, the rewarding factor of cash disappears the moment the employee deposits the check or puts the cash in their wallet. A thank-you card from the supervisor stays visible a lot longer than a check for $25.00 because the employee will proudly tack the card up on the wall of his or her office space for others to see.
Recognition Defined
Recognition is a visible acknowledgment of performance. Every employee wants to be recognised for the positive ways that they add value. Because the work our management accounting teams do is typically invisible to everyone but us, it is more meaningful to a member of your team when you acknowledge something that many take for granted. Every day, members of your team are making their internal customers’ jobs easier. Every time an employee offers a time savings idea or innovates an efficient process, you should give the person specific and sincere appreciation for his or her effort.
How Recognition Affects Performance and Value
A direct correlation exists between the recognition that an employee receives from their supervisor or from his or her peers and the level of his or her performance. The piece that links recognition to performance is the employee’s self-esteem. When you increase the amount of recognition that you and others give to an employee, his or her self-esteem rises. When an employee’s self-esteem rises, so does his or her productivity and effectiveness, which translates into positive performance.
Reinforcement Chain
Recognition is a basic human need. Therefore, to reinforce your employees behaviour so that they continue to provide positive performance, you must get in the habit of noticing them. Employees are a little like children—they want to be noticed. If a child is not being noticed, they may do something loud, obnoxious or against the rules in order to get attention. Similarly, your employees want to feel appreciated and liked by you. If you notice them often and provide the recognition they crave, you will automatically generate good behaviours and positive performance. If you do not notice them, they may act like children and create problems, forcing you to notice them.
By now, you might be thinking “I don’t want to babysit my employees.” Though you may be wary of the human element of leadership, you are not hand-holding your employee by recognising them. You are simply acknowledging the person as an asset to your team. This is what makes a leader effective in getting people to get from point A to point B.
Recognition Value Chain
A similar linking event occurs when you and others proactively provide recognition of the members within your team for their positive contributions.
You have begun to recognise a specific employee’s performance. You observe that the employee is contributing more and living up to his customers’ expectations. This improved performance continues to be noticed by team members and others. In turn, they acknowledge more of their co-workers’ contributions and the level of positive recognition increases. Through this link to contributions, they become greater and more widespread. Therefore, the employee’s positive contributions to others go up. The final link to the positive contributions is the value to the employee’s team. In effect, just as the employee’s self-esteem rises, so does the overall self-esteem of the team as a unit.
In summary, the way you build a valued team member is to begin to recognise on a daily basis the employee’s positive contributions.
How Leaders Create Team Recognition
Recognition is a strategy for building a culture that rewards performance. The clever and effective controller or CFO desires to build a team culture that utilises recognition for others’ contributions. Your overall recognition strategy is simple enough.
It starts with the employee. For example, when an employee experiences that you continually give him positive recognition for his contributions, he likes the way it feels. He also sees that he is treated better by his peers. He notices that other members of his team and the people he works with are doing small things that make his work easier and help him to be more effective. He begins to follow the example set by his supervisor and write thank-you notes, issue pats on the back, and provide little tangible gifts of thanks. He does this, not because it is expected of him, but because he likes the way he feels when acknowledged for something he did. He wants to pass this experience on to others. Most amazingly, he feels wonderful whenever he gives a sincere thanks to someone who helps him.
Very soon, everyone on the accounting team is giving each other positive strokes. It is now a team norm. Assuming that you work in a very functional culture, within a matter of months many others outside the accounting team are giving positive recognition to their employees and their peers and to those who serve them and vice versa. It is an amazing event to watch unfold.
Most importantly, all it took was one leader who believes in providing recognition as a form of rewarding the employee. The person who starts the ball rolling can be you.
How to Tap into the Power of Recognition
Recognition is driven by honest passion and caring. Managers and leaders who understand the power of recognition, its simplicity, its ease of implementation and its positive influence will be the most successful because they will apply recognition and actively encourage others in the organisation to do the same.
One of the important outcomes of recognition within an organisation is its ability to act as a facilitator and reinforcer of desirable behaviour.
Fourteen Behaviour/Reward Principles
What the organisation rewards communicates to employees what is really important.
Most organisations reward the wrong behaviours.
Behaviour that is rewarded is repeated.
How any one employee is rewarded and recognised affects the whole organisation.
Nearly all behaviours that negatively affect accountability can be traced to a reward that supports it.
The best reward, which provides the greatest incentive to maintain and improve performance, is the one that contributes to the fulfilment of the person’s strongest motivator.
People will almost always take the path of least resistance, so the path must be changed to require someone to alter their behaviour.
Recognition is one of the most powerful job motivators available to the supervisor.
The effectiveness of recognition is in the attitude of the person giving it.
The less the culture values recognition, the harder it will be for people to embrace the new attitude.
If you work in a culture that prizes recognition, you will be more likely to give it to others, be aware of it and be gracious when you receive it.
If your culture does not favour recognition, you will limit the amount of it or decline to find ways to overcome the resistance to recognition.
Once a recognition programme is put into place, people still need to be regularly reminded of recognition.
Empowering individuals to recognise each other’s contributions directly and immediately may be uncomfortable.
In the End
Behaviours that are rewarded are guaranteed to be repeated, so use this reality to build star performers on your team. Sincere recognition that you give to each employee for doing the small, important things that add value to others quickly will snowball into a team that provides one another with sincere recognition.
Exercise: Is It There?
Instructions
Be honest as you answer each question about your work setting.
YES |
NO |
|
1. When you walk through your work area, do you see lots of visible proof of recognition — objects like banners, pictures and bulletin boards recognising people’s contributions? |
||
2. Are employees able to play? Do you see items such as congratulatory parties, posters and mementos as visible proof that people take recognition playfully? |
||
3. When asked, could employees provide a recent story about receiving, giving or personally observing recognition in action? |
||
4. Is it evident within your team that the responsibility for giving out recognition belongs to everyone, not just the leader? |
||
5. Are employees evaluated, in part, on the amount of recognition they give to others, especially those they work for and with? |
||
6. On your team, are there tools and methods in place that allow employees to reward and honour each other? |
Answer Key
Each “Yes” answer reflects behaviours that support positive attitudes toward recognition.
Each “No” answer reflects a culture that does not value recognition.
CFO Lesson
Put your concentration on motivation, not compensation.
Exercise: Do You Believe in Feedback?
Instructions
Think about what you normally do at work when you witness both good and bad behaviours. Focus on your normal response to those situations.
With this in mind, complete the following analysis.
Part 1: When I spot a behaviour in any of my company’s employees that should be improved or changed, but the employee is not someone I supervise, I use:
ALMOST ALWAYS |
FREQUENTLY |
OCCASIONALLY |
NEVER |
|
TYPE OF FEEDBACK |
APPROXIMATE % OF TIME USED |
|||
Silence |
||||
Criticism “That was not the way you were supposed to do that....” |
||||
Advice “I noticed that you did... next time I suggest that you.. “ |
||||
Reinforcement “I noticed that you did ... and I really appreciate that....” |
||||
Part 2: When I spot a behaviour in one of my employees that she should improve or change, I use:
ALMOST ALWAYS |
FREQUENTLY |
OCCASIONALLY |
NEVER |
|
TYPE OF FEEDBACK |
APPROXIMATE % OF TIME USED |
|||
Silence |
||||
Criticism “That was not the way you were supposed to do that....” |
||||
Advice “I noticed that you did... next time I suggest that you.. “ |
||||
Reinforcement “I noticed that you did ... and I really appreciate that....” |
||||
Part 3: When I spot a behaviour in any employee that is admirable and worth repeating, I use:
ALMOST ALWAYS |
FREQUENTLY |
OCCASIONALLY |
NEVER |
|
TYPE OF FEEDBACK |
APPROXIMATE % OF TIME USED |
|||
Silence |
||||
Criticism “That was not the way you were supposed to do that....” |
||||
Advice “I noticed that you did... next time I suggest that you.. “ |
||||
Reinforcement “I noticed that you did ... and I really appreciate that....” |
||||
Answer Key
While an exact assessment is difficult, you will quickly notice which of these four methods of feedback you use more and less frequently.
If, based on your answers, you discover that you mostly use silence or criticism, then you are undermining both your team’s effectiveness and your own. You must change methods and become more supportive; you will find that you get a lot more positive results from your employees and those with whom you work.
CFO Lesson
You obtain better results by providing on a regular basis neutral and supportive feedback.
Part 4: Answer These Questions
What did you learn about yourself as a coach?
What areas of providing feedback do you need to improve to be more effective as a CFO?