Debra Chantry-Taylor: Change the Person or Change the Person

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

You're not firing them, you're freeing them. I talk about the square peg in the round hole. Everybody deserves to be a square peg in a square hole, or a round peg in a round hole. When you avoid the hard conversation, you don't save pain, you spread it. Real Leadership isn't about being liked. It's about being trusted. It's about clarity, courage and compassion. That's what happens when you give people the chance to change. You show them respect by telling the truth, and that's the first meaning of change the person having the conversation. That's the real test of leadership, and that's where radical candour comes in.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:38

Welcome back to better business, Better Life. I'm your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor, certified EOS implementer, family business advisor, leadership coach, and just someone who's genuinely passionate about helping you lead a better life through creating a better business. Today, I'm going to be diving into one of the hardest, most emotional parts of leadership. What to do when the same name keeps coming up. You know what I mean? You're in your level 10 meeting. You're working through your people headlines. And someone says, quietly, yeah, we still need to talk about them. Everyone nods. Someone sighs, and they say, let's wait until the next quarterly. So you come into the quarterly with your Eos implementer. And quarter after quarter, I see the same name, the same tension, the same frustration. No one wants to deal with it, yet everyone knows it's there, and let's be honest, underneath all that, unfortunately, you've got a slow leak in trust culture and performance. So today we're going to talk about how to fix that. We will talk about why we avoid these decisions, how the people analyzer brings real clarity to these decisions, how to use radical candour to give specific feedback, how to decide whether to help someone change as a person, whether you need to change the person in that seat. The old adage says, either change the person or change the person. So grab a notebook, because by the end of this episode, you'll have a step by step way to deal with that name once and for all. So why do we wait? When I ask leaders why they haven't dealt with it, the answers sound beautifully reasonable. They've been with us forever. They're a good person. They've always been with me. I couldn't bear to let them go. We're short staffed. There's not enough good people out there to replace them. It's really hard to find good people. I get it because I've been there myself. Early in my career, I had an office manager who'd been with me from the start. She was loyal, kind and wonderful with clients. But as we grew the systems, the pace, the expectations, they all changed, and she didn't. And every quarter, we'd circle back and be like, let's give us some more support. Maybe next quarter, she'll catch up. What else can we do? And I kept telling myself that we were protecting her, but the truth was, we were protecting ourselves from feeling uncomfortable, from having to make that decision, because facing it means admitting that someone you care about might not fit anymore, and that's painful. But every time we delayed that decision, the rest of the team lost a little bit more energy, a little bit more faith in leadership. And here's the thing, when you avoid the hard conversation, you don't save pain, you spread it. So what's the hidden cost? Well, think about your A players in your business. Do you not think they don't see what's happening. They're picking up the extra work. They're whispering to each other after meetings, and over time, they're thinking, why would we bother going the extra mile if no one else has to? And that's how cultures decline, not through a single dramatic event, but through tiny daily compromises. I had a manufacturing client where one technician consistently missed quality checks. Everyone knew it. The excuse was always he's the only one who knows the old machines. By the time they acted, two of their best younger engineers had left, not because of pay, but because of frustration, and when we finally replaced that technician, production actually increased 20% and everyone said, Why didn't we do that sooner? And I've never, never heard a leader say, I let them go too soon. One of my favourite tools for helping us to make the right decision is the people analyser. The people analyser helps us find that clarity, and it gives you a real way to separate heart from head. It takes away all the emotion, and it gives you a chance to think about what's really going on. And so the way the people analyzer works is we write our core values across the top, things like own it. Team first always improving. We then have GWC, which stands for gets it. Once it has capacity. We then put the people's names on the left hand side, and we just go through and we work through it, and we go, what do we think they exhibit in terms of the way of the core values and also the GWC, and it's a chance for us to just think about what we're observing. So in the core values, you're either going to go with a plus, which means most of the time they actually exhibit that core value. They live, they breathe, they bleed. It a plus minus means you. Ever quite sure what you're going to get each day, and a minus means they rarely or never exhibit the behaviours associated with that core value. So plus plus minus or minus, you then look at GWC, get it. Want it, capacity to do it. And this is just a yes or a no. So a get it means that they truly understand the role. Do they get the ins and outs of it? Do that all of their neurons and their brain fire when they are doing the role. Were they born to do this role? Do they really get it? The want? It doesn't mean so they actually want to get out of bed every single morning and come into the office or into the environment and do that role. It's not about the title. It's not about the pay. It's about do they genuinely want to do it? And then capacities, they have the technical knowledge, the expertise, the experience, the skills to actually do the job. Well, do they mentally, physically, spiritually, actually have the capacity to do that job and the energy to succeed? And when you've got this, you've now got an idea of where the issue might be, and you can start to ask the questions and had the conversations to find out what is really going on. I once worked an engineering firm where the ops manager scored plus on the team first, but a plus minus on own it. He often blamed suppliers. He often blamed other people. He didn't truly own what was going on. And so when we did the GWC component of it, we worked out that he'd got it and he had the capacity, but he no longer wanted it anymore. He'd outgrown the job, but he hasn't actually said it out loud. So we had a conversation with him, because the people analyzer made that really visible. We had the conversation with him, and we realised that because he didn't want the job anymore, that was actually affecting how he behaved in terms of the core values. And often this, I see this happen if somebody is in a role where they don't have the capacity to do it, or they don't want it anymore, there's that can actually start to negatively impact on the way they exhibit those core values. So the great thing was that people analyse, analyzer highlighted it. We had a chance for it to be made visible. We had the conversation with him. We talked about what he really loved to do and where he wanted to go, and we found a technical specialist role that he moved into and he absolutely loved. And the next time did the people analyzer, he was a plus across the board on all those core values. They also promoted a new person to the ops manager role, and that person thrived in that role too. So that's an example of changing the person's story, not firing them, but changing their seat, and you can do that if they're a plus minus. However, if they're on a minus, on any of those core values, they've probably gone too far down the line, and you won't be able to change them back to a plus or a plus minus. So have a user people analyzer be really honest about it. Think about specific examples of where they're perhaps living by those core values, and then use the GWC as a second component to go Are they still in the right role? Do they get it? Do they want it? Their capacity to do it? I want to talk about radical candour and specific feedback, knowing the issue is one thing, using the people analyzer and understanding what the potential issue is is one thing, but having the conversation, that's the real test of leadership, and that's where radical candour comes in. Kim Scott's model has got two axes. It talks about caring personally and challenging directly. When you care, you don't challenge, you fall into ruinous empathy when you challenge but don't care. It's obnoxious aggression. And do neither, and it's manipulative, insincerity. But when you do both, when you both care and challenge, that's what radical can do. And this is what it sounds like. Hey, John, I really value how loyal you are to this company. You've been a huge part of our growth, but I've noticed over the last three months, we've missed several project deadlines, and it's creating stress for the rest of the team. I want to help you succeed here. So let's talk about what's getting in the way that's kind it's clear. It's definitely not sugar coated, but it's also not cruel. And to make it even easier, you can use the SBI model situation, behaviour and impact situation in yesterday's client meeting behaviour, you interrupted the account manager three times. Impact. It made the client think we weren't aligned. So there you have specific, undeniable, actionable problem is that leaders often make two mistakes.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:11

They're either very vague. You need a better attitude. You're not living by our value, or they store everything up for an annual review and feedback should be small, frequent and kind. Sometimes, once someone has clear feedback, they'll actually surprise you, and this can help you change them as a person. So I coached a digital agency owner whose creative director was toxic in meetings, brilliant work, terrible communication. So we practice radical candour, we gave very specific SBI examples, and we offered coaching and emotional intelligence. Three months later, that same person was mentoring juniors. He actually told me, no one has ever told me what I was doing wrong, and I thank you for that. So that's what happens when you give people the chance to change. You show them respect by telling the truth, and that's the first meaning of change the person. So change the person means you give them a specific feedback. It's not just saying, I don't think you do this particular value. Give them, I would say at least three specific examples using the SPI methodology to be very specific about what is going on. Use the situation, give them the behaviour you observed and the impact it had. And I said, sometimes that will just be the absolute light bulb, aha moment for somebody, they go, I had absolutely no idea, and they will thank you, and they will make the changes. But sometimes, despite all the clarity and the support, nothing changes, and that's when it's time for the second kind of change, changing the person, whether we like it or not. Sometimes this is the only thing that we can actually do. Best thing we can do is do it with dignity. Be honest, be kind, and don't drag it out. I helped a tech company through this with a long serving CFO brilliant when they were small, but the business had grown and grown beyond him. We planned a respectful transition, thanked him publicly, helped him in another role, and two months later, he emailed to say, I didn't realise how unhappy I'd become. Thank you for helping me move on. And here's the beautiful part. I've seen many people leave many businesses that I've worked with and later come back. They go elsewhere, they learn new skills, they grow as people, and when they return, they fit again. But even those that don't come back, they're almost always happier, because once they're in the right environment, they thrive. You're not firing them, you're freeing them. I talk about the square peg in the round hole. Everybody deserves to be a square peg in a square hole, or a round peg in a round hole, and so by recognising that they're not in the right environment, you you're unhappy with them, and the way they're behaving and the the results they're producing, they're they're also probably desperately unhappy. It must be really tough being a square peg in a round hole or a round peg in a square hole. It doesn't mean you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that you're not going to be right for somebody else, but you're just not right for right here, right now. So if you've got somebody that really feels like they're not living by the core values, or they don't GWC, the role, and you've spent the time to actually work with them, to give them some feedback, and they're still not able to change, like it or not, it's time to do something about helping them move on. So now it's time for reflection and action. Let's pause for a moment. Think of that name that keeps coming up in your head every week, coming up in your quarterlies, every quarter you probably already got it in your head. Ask yourself these questions. First, do they live by our core values if they're mostly pluses with one or two plus minuses, whatever your bar accepts, then that's fine. But if they aren't living by our core values, you've got to start talking to them. Do the GW, see the role? Do they genuinely get it? Want to have capacity to do it? And if any of those is a no, or perhaps, I'm not sure, you've got to have the conversation. Then ask yourself, you know, have I given them honest specific feedback? Have I given them at least three examples where they're not meeting the core value? Have I given them honest specific feedback about why I think they don't want the role anymore? And then the second question is, Have I supported them with clarity coaching and time? Have I really given them the clarity about what's going on, have I asked them to help me understand what's going on for them? Have I coached them to see if I can help them to improve? Have I given the right time and the resources, the energy, the effort to really allow them to step back up? And if the answer is yes to those two questions and it's still not working, then it's time for real courage, because Leadership isn't about being liked. It's about being trusted. It's about clarity, courage and compassion. And as I always say, you either need to change the person or you need to change the person. Thanks for listening to better business, better life. If today's episode hit a nerve, maybe this is the quarter you finally do something about that name that keeps coming up. Grab your people. Analyzer, be radically candid, and remember kindness and clarity aren't opposites. And if you'd like help running that process in your business, whether it's building a stronger leadership team, learning how to give feedback that sticks, or making those top people decisions. Please reach out to me. You can connect with me at www dot business action.com.au, or you can find me on LinkedIn. Debra Chantry-Taylor, let's make sure you've got the right people in the right seats and a business that truly gives you a better life. Until next time. I'm Debra Chantry-Taylor, lead with heart, lead with clarity and go. Make it happen. You.