The 80/20 Rule For Effective Leaders
The Pareto Principle says that 20% of my activities will produce 80% of my results. So if I want to become a more productive and successful leader, all I have to do is identify what the20% is, and focus all my efforts on improving them. Sounds simple, but "people" tend to get in our way.
As a leadership coach, I work with new leaders to help them build confidence and skills to continually improve their performance. When we go though the time study exercise, what I find 90% of the time is leaders spend 80% of their time with the LOWER 20% of the people on their team. Why? They feel that's the reason they are there, to fix people.
There's a saying that goes "you are only as strong as your weakest link". So our thinking is that if we always work on the lower performers, our "chain" will continually get stronger. The problem with that strategy is while you are working on the weak links, your stronger links are getting weaker. In other words, because you have no time to spend making good people better, your team's overall performance never improves.
Think about what we typically do as a leader. We have a top performer on our team. We leave them alone because they do such a great job. What message does that send them if you have little to no time to spend with them? AND, what do we do when we need work completed quickly and correct? We give it to the best people. So what we do is reward the top performer with more work and less coaching, and the poor performers with more coaching and less work. Sound like the strategy that will boost your team's performance?
Switching our focus to our top 20% is a challenge. We need to create clear guidelines for performance, and advise team members early in the training process what will take place if performance is below the acceptable range. We also owe our people the opportunity to improve when there is a valid reason for their performance. As leaders, we know our people well and should know if there is a personal issue present. We should coach, provide feedback, and expect improvement. During this coaching we remind the team member what we communicated during the initial training. If the performance still does not improve, we move on.
So I would challenge you to do your own time study. Log what you are doing and how much time you spent doing it. At the end of the week, total up all your activities and see if you are spending more or less time with your top performers. When you can identify your "top 20" and spend 80% of your time, effort, and resources there, you will be amazed at how well you will perform.
As a leadership coach, I work with new leaders to help them build confidence and skills to continually improve their performance. When we go though the time study exercise, what I find 90% of the time is leaders spend 80% of their time with the LOWER 20% of the people on their team. Why? They feel that's the reason they are there, to fix people.
There's a saying that goes "you are only as strong as your weakest link". So our thinking is that if we always work on the lower performers, our "chain" will continually get stronger. The problem with that strategy is while you are working on the weak links, your stronger links are getting weaker. In other words, because you have no time to spend making good people better, your team's overall performance never improves.
Think about what we typically do as a leader. We have a top performer on our team. We leave them alone because they do such a great job. What message does that send them if you have little to no time to spend with them? AND, what do we do when we need work completed quickly and correct? We give it to the best people. So what we do is reward the top performer with more work and less coaching, and the poor performers with more coaching and less work. Sound like the strategy that will boost your team's performance?
Switching our focus to our top 20% is a challenge. We need to create clear guidelines for performance, and advise team members early in the training process what will take place if performance is below the acceptable range. We also owe our people the opportunity to improve when there is a valid reason for their performance. As leaders, we know our people well and should know if there is a personal issue present. We should coach, provide feedback, and expect improvement. During this coaching we remind the team member what we communicated during the initial training. If the performance still does not improve, we move on.
So I would challenge you to do your own time study. Log what you are doing and how much time you spent doing it. At the end of the week, total up all your activities and see if you are spending more or less time with your top performers. When you can identify your "top 20" and spend 80% of your time, effort, and resources there, you will be amazed at how well you will perform.
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