LEAP Facilitator’s Guide

Welcome to the tutorial on how to facilitate LEAP, which is Leaders Engage in Accelerating Performance. Now, this is a program that we at Boss Builders have facilitated for a number of years now and as you take the program over, what we thought we do is take some time to walk you through the materials and the process that we've used for a long time and share maybe some best practices and some lessons learned as you are going to facilitate this program for your emerging leaders.

Now, to set it up, there's a couple things you're going to probably need. First of all, will be the workbooks and so you'll order those from us ahead of time. Those will be shipped and ready to go. We recommend having some tent cards that you can put up. You will be using your insights discovery material and so you could have that ready to go.

And then there is an activity in module one that is going to have groups break up and actually build something. And so for that, you'll need, what we usually recommend is maybe a big packet of paper plates, some straws, some tape and maybe glue sticks or anything you want to do construction materials out of enough for three groups. And I'll walk you through how that exercise works and you'll have that. And then I know that you do your photo and your frame and everything, so have that all ready to go. Again, make sure you order the materials ahead of time just so those are available when you're ready to go.

Well, the first thing that we usually do when we start is some logistics. And so you can talk about when you want to do the breaks, we recommend that you do a break every 50, that's five zero minutes with a 10 minute break because what that does is it gives people a chance to go stretch, they want to check their phones and do all those things and you'll make up the time at the end, but what you'll find is people tend to be a lot more engaged when they have some breaks and they know that they're going to be getting a break. They won't have that anxiety of, "Hey, I need to check my phone."

So this is the opening slide, feel free to change it any way that you want. Take my branding off there. That's probably a good idea. And then we begin with an overview so you can certainly introduce yourself and then talk about what the course is going to look like. So this is in their book and notice on the top of each slide, there is a chapter and page number so that everybody can follow along. If you don't see a chapter and page number, then that picture is not going to be in the workbook.

We also recommend too that you have at least two flip charts and some of these are better drawn out than using the slides, but they're there for the slides if you don't want to do that. Sometimes depending on the layout of the room, flip charts are not the best options, so you have that. But everything that you'll need will be on the slides. Just let them know that the intent is to cover all of those modules in two days. Now, on top of that, you always have your legal brief typically with Hoyt and if you have speakers during lunch, that's added in there, but this is the core of the material. If you're going to use insights discovery, probably best to use that maybe right after module two because module two is on communication techniques and then you're going to add that nuance of your insight's profile, which I think will be really good after that. You could also do it before that module, but our recommendation is probably right after.

So let them know module one is about what's expected of you and even though you may have the title, maybe nobody's really taken the time to explain exactly what's required of you in that role. Then module two is a big one. It's communication for success. It talks about how to have conversations and there's some really good models in there and there's a lot of practical and there's video clips and you're going to see a lot of video clips in the program. Now, they will be embedded into your slides, but I'm also going to have them available in your trainer guide. You'll actually see them on the video where they fit in and then what I'll do is I'll tell you how to facilitate the debrief because the key with the video is not to be shown for entertainment purposes, there's a demonstration of the technique and so if you can debrief that correctly, it's not only entertaining but it also educates as well.

Module three is the biggest one in the course and in our experience, we started on the first day and finish up the morning of the second day. It's driving results. It's how to be an effective manager of performance and there's a lot of tools and techniques in that one and they're very practical, how to get feedback coaching. You'll see when we get into that module. There's a lot of really good information. Now, modules 4, 5 and 6 tend to go pretty quickly and you'll need that because the legal brief will take up some time on that second day and you'll be catching up with questions. And so the module on motivation goes fairly quickly. The team module goes quick because there's a tool that you'll be teaching and then dealing with conflict takes a little bit longer, but that's always a good one. There's a lot of video clips in that one as well.

And time management is going to be kind of key in this. No one ever complains if you finish early, so if that happens, well, good. So give your group an overview of what the program is just so they know what to expect.

Now, depending on where you're at, there may be the opportunity for John Selldorff to come in and do a talk. I know that you typically schedule these around your annual meetings or biannual meetings and so if he can come live, that's great, if not, there is a standard video which I have and you can embed that into a slide. We've used that not as frequently as we have him actually come and talk, which I think is always best. He'll give an overview, he'll ask for questions, of course nobody ever has questions, then there's always one brave soul that has one and then that's when it usually starts. His brief usually takes about 20 minutes or so because usually he's got to run off and get his meeting started.

So once you've had the overview of the material and John gives his brief, then it's time for introductions. And so the way we do this, and this is in the workbook too, is we have people pair up and if there's an odd number, there can be one group of three, and what you'll do is you'll take 10 minutes to interview the person next to you on these questions. And so there's a number of reasons that we do this and I'll explain what we do when we do the debrief, but you're going to want to know a little bit about them, length of time, sometimes you'll do this right on the heels of an acquisition. So you'll find there's a lot of new people, which is really great to do this.

Now, the third bullet there, your biggest leadership management challenge. It's really important that when they give you this, that you write these down on a flip chart because we're going to use this when we do the coaching practice on day two. And so as people go around the room and introduce their partner, they'll say, and this is Jeremy Evans and his biggest leadership challenge is blank, make sure you write that up there legibly enough that you can come back to that on day two. Length of time in the role and number of direct reports is good for you as the facilitator to know just so that you have a better idea of what the experience level is. And then the final bullet there, the theme song, this one kind of gets a lot of laughs and you may have to explain it, but basically what your theme song is, is that when you walk into a room what songs should be playing and we kind of pattern that if you watch professional wrestling or boxing or MMA. Usually the fighter comes to the ring and they're playing some sort of song. So ask them, what do you want your theme song to be?

So you give them 10 minutes when the 10 minutes is up, then you start having them introduced the partner. And you'll find what the theme songs they follow a pattern, you'll find eye of the tiger usually shows up lots, the Darth Vader theme shows up a lot. Everybody gets a good laugh out of it. Some people will say, "I can't think of a theme song", and that's good. But as you're listening, there's two things that you could be doing. If you have a partner, this is even better. You would be at the board writing down what their leadership challenge is. Your partner should be writing down the theme songs.

And what we'd like to do is at the very first break, if you've got Spotify or Pandora, build a quick playlist for this group of their theme songs. Now be careful because some of them are going to have bad words and suggestive lyrics. So you might want to weed some of those out. But what I like to do then is at every break, is to let the playlist play and people can hear their theme song. It's just kind of a little fun thing that sort of builds the tone that, "Hey, there's going to be a lot of material, but it's not going to be a horrible day. We're going to have a good time doing it." Once everybody has gone around the room and introduced their partner, then it's time to debrief this first activity. And so what you say is when we do leadership challenges, we do that for a couple of reasons.

Number one, I want you to be able to realize you're not in this alone because you're going to see themes and patterns. You're going to see people with a very similar one. And it's things like, I deal with different personalities at work. I have people that are set in their ways, and just let them know. We're going to do our best to try to address a lot of these topics, but then tomorrow, we're going to do some coaching practice and you're going to get a chance to get some help one on one with your coaching partner to practice the techniques and you may find that you get your problem solved. Then let them know that the purpose of the theme song is to build rapport. Ask them, how many of you felt kind of happy when someone asked you about your theme song? And they'll agree and say that this is really the key to everything to be successful as a leader in an organization is that you have to build rapport.

Some of you have known each other for a long time, but I bet you never knew that person had a theme song. And this is the case with your direct reports. They may have things about them you've never known about that make them unique and special. And if you are going to ask them to accomplish great things, doing what you're telling them to do, you need to know what's important to them. And by starting off with the things that are not as connected to work, you're going to find that you build a better relationship. It doesn't mean that you have to be buddy buddy with your folks. In fact, for some people, that's already a problem. But you do have to have a mutual respect and something as simple as asking them, what's your theme song, does that. Let them know. If you do not have rapport, you will not succeed with any of the tools that we're going to be teaching you in this program. So key learning here is build rapport.

Now, once you've done that, you'll be amazed. You'll probably be at the end of your first 50 minute time block. And so that's what we would tell you to do is to go ahead and take your very first break and when you come back from the break, then what you'll do is you'll get into module one. So check out the video for module one. We'll continue our tutorial.

Module one is your first chance to start talking about what's expected of people in this role. So what we find a lot of times is people that get promoted to supervisor, they are promoted from their level of being an individual contributor. They're usually pretty good at that, and then they get tossed into the role. So what module one does is it kind of gives you an idea of what's expected. So maybe you can start this module out by asking the group, how many of you were just told on a Friday, "Hey, in the next couple of weeks you're going to be promoted to supervisor"? You're going to find there's a fair amount of people. And then ask how many of them were given specific directions on what they would be expected to do, and you can find there'll be very few hands for that. That's the purpose of this module.

And so we begin this module with an activity on role expectations. The way the activity works is that you'll divide the room in half, and what you'll do is you'll ask the one group and say, "Listen, what I want you to think about now, and I'm going to give you about five minutes to come together with a list, is make a list of the roles, the goals, the expectations that Legrand expects from you in the role of being a supervisor."

When they ask questions, "Well, what do you mean by a role?" Well, then you could say something like this: "How many of you in the room are parents?" And a lot of hands will go up, and say, "Well, how many of you knew when you became a parent that one of the roles you were going to play is chauffeur, driving your kids all over the place?" That will get them to understand this is what we're looking for. And then goals, meaning what are the expectations that Legrand has about you accomplishing things? What kinds of things are they looking for? And then expectations in that. So that's group number one.

Now, group number two, you're going to ask them to make the same list, only the perspective they're going to look at is, what do my direct reports expect of me? Roles, goals, and expectations. So have them work together, come up with a list. Give them five minutes, and when they're done, say, "Okay, hold onto your list and go back to your seat."

Now, the next thing you can do, you could draw this up on a flip chart, or what you could do is you could go ahead and put up this slide. What we want them to start thinking about is, what is the difference between leaders and managers? And if you draw this up on the flip chart, what I would tell you to do is put everything up there except for the words. So what you would do is maybe make a circle at the bottom and say results, and then have two arrows going down. And then at the top, just put leader and manager, and ask the group, "In the pairing of words, leader and manager, which one is better?" And the room will always say leader's better. You say, "Okay, that's interesting," and then you could also put down something like this, just put down leadership and management, and say, "Which of these two is better?" And everybody, of course, will say leadership is better.

You'll say, "Okay, good. Well, let's talk about the purpose of leadership and management that is done by leaders and managers, and that is to get results." So at the bottom in that little circle you drew, you could write results, and you could see it up on the slide. That I would recommend rather than show them the slide, but if you show them the slide, you can just work them through the model the way I'm going to show you.

So what we can talk about then, and there's a lot of ways you can do it. The way I usually do it is that I tell them, "We're going to look at the difference between leaders and managers who do leadership and management, and we're going to liken these to 1980s martial arts stars," and of course, everybody's going to look at you funny, but say, "Let's think about this for a minute."

So what you would do is you would ask the group, "How many of you know who Chuck Norris is?" Of course, they all would raise their hand, and say, "Who knows what type of martial art Chuck Norris uses?" Well, there may be one or two people that might know, but basically it's this, he uses a form of Kenpo karate and taekwondo. What they need to understand is that if you're going to fight with him, he's not going to be hiding up in a tree. He's going to be right in front of you using his fists and his feet to put you down.

So we would say, and this is where you could draw this on your flip chart, "Chuck Norris uses power to get things done. He'll push on you, and that's how we look at management. Management uses power, and sometimes has to push to get results." And then ask the group, "Who can tell me what's wrong with this?" And usually they'll say, "Well, there's nothing wrong," and you'd say, "Exactly."

Well, then let's take a look at our other 1980s martial arts star, and that would be Steven Seagal. So what you could do is you could say, "How many of you know what martial art Steven Seagal uses?" Of course, they'll say, "I don't know," but there may be one, and basically he uses something called aikido. Now, aikido is a type of martial art that uses the opponent's power against them. So if he's rushed by somebody, he will just draw them in and be able to subdue them. What you could tell them is he uses influence, pulling to get things done, and that's what we think that leaders do. They influence people to get results. Ask them, "What's wrong with that?" Of course, there's nothing wrong with it. And so our goal then is we get results. Sometimes we have to use power and push. Sometimes we have to draw people and influence to get results.

Now, this is where you can debrief the activity. Have the group that put their roles, goals, and expectations from Legrand's perspective, and what you'll probably find is that it's a lot of things that are about numbers and results. And so ask them, "Does that sound more like Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal?" And most of the time, it's more Chuck Norris stuff, and say "Exactly. Even though Legrand says we want you to be leaders, bottom line is they want you to get results through numbers and getting stuff done."

Then have the group who did the other perspective read theirs, and you're going to find it's a lot different. It's going to be things like help us develop, help us grow, coach us, lead us, and you're going to say, "That sounds a lot more like the Steven Seagal list, the leadership. So bottom line is, both are important. In the grand scheme of things, Legrand wants you to be great managers and get results, however, people want you to lead them and influence them, so we got to learn both, and in LEAP, you're going to learn both."

Once we do that, we can move into expectations. So, we're going to start with the first of many videos that you're going to see in this program. The video is called extreme sheep herding. Now, on page three, there's a little kind of a sheet where they can take some note, and so let them know that the movie was put out a number of years ago by the Samsung LG people, and it's a little dated, but what it's going to show you is people getting things done with sheep. And so tell them to, while they're watching this video, pay attention to the men up on the hill with the walkie-talkies, the men on the ground with the whistles, the dogs, and the sheep

When the movie's over, people will probably laugh, and you say, "We can learn a couple things from this movie. Number one, these guys have an awful lot of time on their hands. But what we want to do is we want to look at all the players in the video and think about how typically organizations run. So at Legrand, what is the equivalent of the men up on the top of the hill with the walkie-talkies and the playbook?" And the group will probably say, "That's the executive team," and you say, "Exactly." Right now, if you're at your meeting, you can say John Selldorff and all the other executives, they're looking at the big picture. They're job is to see what's coming down the line so Legrand can prepare for that. That's their level.

Now, at Legrand, what are the equivalent of the men at the bottom of the hill with the dog whistles? And typically, they'll say, "That could be senior management, VP, director level," and you say, "Exactly. Their job is to listen to what the executive team is telling them coming down the line and put down some strategic plans to get things done. In the video, what are the equivalent of the sheep dogs?" And you can say, "Well, that's actually all of you in this room. Your job is to listen to the whistle and be able to get the sheep going in one direction," and then that's the last question, what's the equivalent of the sheep? And say, "It's typically the workers here," and you say, "Yeah, now keep this in mind. They're not as dumb as sheep, because if you think about the video, what was the most valuable thing in the video? It was the sheep. So our job as the dogs is to be able to be tuned in to where we're supposed to be taken in our people and get our people going in that direction."

As a side note, you can share this story. When I was stationed over in Australia, the sheep stations, the ranchers told me that if a dog ever bites a sheep, they put the dog down. So our job is not to bite the sheep. We use our influence to get them going in a direction where we're productive. So it's just one way of kind of looking at the role. It can be a lot of fun.

Then we move on to the first of many, many models in this program, and it's what the expectations are of you in this role of the boss, I guess we could call it.

So the way we start it off is we say that one way that firefighters know how to put out fires is they understand that fires are made up of three components, and all three have to be in place to burn. This model on the screen is a picture of what's called the fire triangle. So you could ask the group, "What are the three elements that make a fire burn?" Well, there's fuel, there's heat, and there's oxygen. And so the corollary then is if we want to put the fire out, we just simply remove one element. So the question to the group would be, "What does that have to do with us?" And you could say, "Well, nothing," and they'll laugh, but then you put up the next slide and say, "You know what? We want you to be a great boss. The end of every workday, you are the topic of conversation around the family dinner table. What are they saying of you?" And so this is where we have to understand, what are the expectations?

Now, just like the fire triangle, there's three areas here that have to be maintained so the fire burns. The first one is along the bottom, and this is one that's typically just a given, right? You have to be able to fix systems and processes, and let them know, "Many of you were promoted to supervisor because you were really good at this," and that's important because if you ever had a boss that's dumber than you, you know this is a painful thing. So we expect you to have the answers to technical problems. However, there are two other elements that now you need to pay attention to. The first one, or I guess it's the second one, is to protect the house, and what this means is that you're the first line of defense against any threats to Legrand. There are really three types of threats that we find.

The first one are basic safety. So for some of them, they're in an environment where there are safety hazards, so they've got to be looking out for this. Second area is HR related issues, discrimination, EEO, sexual harassment. They're the first line of defense, not HR. Let them know that if you sit in safety training and if you sit in HR compliance training and you blow it off, you're still responsible, and so if anything happens on your watch, you're going to be the one who's got to take ownership. So pay attention to the boring training. The third area is anything related to customers. And so you know, if you guys get a bad reputation, that's bad for business, so the boss has got to be paying attention to that.

But the third role, and this is the one most of them don't do very well for a couple of reasons, is to develop people. Now, a lot of them will say, "Well, I don't have the time to do that," and you'll have to say, "Well, you better make the time because it's important." The second thing is they may say, "Well, I don't know how to do it." Well, that will be taken care of in LEAP because we're going to spend a great deal of time on this in module three. Just let them know, all three are an expectation, and if we pull one away, the fire goes out. So let them know LEAP will give them a lot of tools on developing people. There's other programs I know that you have at Legrand that handle the other three.

Which takes us into our second activity, which is a fun one, and it's the one where you're going to use all of the paper plates and tape and those things. It's supervisory styles. Now, the way that we would set this up is that you'll have the groups number off one, two, three, one, two, three. So have them go around the room and then say, "Okay, I want all the ones in this corner, twos over here, threes over there." So get them up out of their seats going to the group. And then what I usually like to do is say, "How many of you in the group just hate dumb training games? "There's always going to be one, and say, "Good, because I don't want you to have to play the dumb training game. I want you just to be an observer." So you take the three observers, one from each group, this is very important, and just have them stand off to the side, and we'll get to them in a moment.

Now, from each group what you're going to need is have them identify a group leader, and once the groups have identified their group leader, you're going to tell them, "All right, groups, standby, and I want all three group leaders to follow me outside," so now you're going to take them outside.

All right. Once they're outside, you have three cards you're going to give them. So the first one is going to get a card, and they are going to be called the micromanager. The second is going to be the, what do we call it? The benign neglecter, and the third is going to be the helpful facilitator. Now, there's bullet points on those cards, but it'd be important to tell them and say, "Listen, what's going to happen here is I'm going to have you go in and give directions." So the directions are this: Each team leader is going to go to their team and say, "We have 10 minutes to use the materials available," and what you'll do is have the materials. You could hand those to their team leaders right then, and you are going to construct something that describes how things are at Legrand. You know, you're a company made of acquisitions, and so we're going to work together and we're going to create it.

Now, this is where the activity gets fun. The one identified as a micromanager, their instructions are to go in there, tell everybody exactly what to do, how to do it. If there are suggestions, don't implement the suggestions. Take complete and total control. The second one, the benign neglecter, now theirs are a little different. They are going to explain the directions. We're going to put together something, 10 minutes that describes Legrand, and then that's the end of their input. They're going to stand back. If people ask them questions, they can say like, "Well, just do what you think is the right thing to do," and even if you want to play it up, you can get on your phone and just be totally absent from the group. Let them work on their own. Helpful facilitator is going to be a balance, right? You're going to be guiding them and supporting them, but allowing them to take the lead. You're going to do a balance of both, but a healthy balance.

Let them know that observers are going to watch, but the observers aren't going to know what they're looking for. So make sure they understand the activity, and then go back, and then as you go into the room say, "All right, your team leaders are coming with materials and instructions. You've got 10 minutes. Go." Then you pull your observers and say, "Okay, I want you to go to group one, you to group two, you to group three. I just want you to observe the style of the manager and the group dynamic, and when it's over, I'm going to ask you what you thought."

So this is a good opportunity. If they're in there to play the theme song playlist, it can be fun. You're going to find that a lot of them have a good time with this, and just kind of pay attention and make sure the observers are taking notes. When the 10 minutes are over, then what we're going to do is we're going to go to each group. So first thing we do is we say, "All right, we're going to go on. We're going to look at everybody's project."

So get the groups to come over to group one, and so what you're going to do is you'll ask the questions here. So group one, how was it working together? And they'll say, "Ah, it was okay." I'll say, "Okay, who would like to explain the thing?" And so they'll explain what they've created, and then ask the observer, "What did you observe as you watch this?" And they won't even know what they're looking for, so they're just going to see, well, the manager seemed like they were really controlling, and then everybody in the group's going to nod. Then when it's all done say, "All right, so team leader number one, what are your instructions?" Let them read, and the group will say, "Yeah, they did it really well."

Say, "Okay," so then we moved to group two. Same drill. Group two, how was it working together? "Ah, it was okay." "All right, who can describe the thing?" And so they'll go through and describe. Then ask the observer, "Tell me what you witnessed." "Well, it seemed like the team leader really wasn't engaged and the group was confused, but then they came together," and then the group will say, "Yeah, yeah absolutely. We had to just do it because our team leader was a no show," and then have the team leader read their instructions. They're the benign neglect. They'll say, "Oh, yeah."

Then go to group three. Same drill. Now, this one will be a little different because they're going to say, "We had a great experience." Usually their project is probably the best one. Then we ask the observer. The observer will tell them, and then the team leader reads the instructions. And so this is where we debrief it. Everybody typically is still standing, and they're kind of looking at their stuff, and just say, "The approach of micromanager, you're going to see this in module three. There's a time and a place to take full control. If you don't know what you're doing, you need somebody to take charge. But if you already know what you're doing, it's not really healthy. The second example, the benign neglecter, this one works well when you have skilled professionals that really don't need your help as the boss. But if there's ambiguity, boy, you can't just neglect and hope they figure it out.

"Then the third group, it's a balance of both. And so the key learning here is that you need to understand your audience. Number one, you need to understand your team. How well do they understand the task, how clear are the directions, and what is your role? You train up good group of people, you're not going to have to sit there every moment and watch what they're doing, and in module three we're going to explore how to do that, and so if you think that would be a great place to be where you're not having to micromanage, stay tuned, because we're going to get to that."

This is usually a really good time for them to take a break, and you can give them their 10 minutes. Sometimes I play this up and I'll say that we do this in every LEAP session, and in the evening reception, what we're going to do is the executive team is going to walk around the room and they're going to judge which of these projects is the best, and the winner gets a prize, just so they think it's serious, but you could have a lot of fun with this. This is one of the best activities in the program. So that'll take us then into the next module, which is module two, communication. Now again, you may choose to do your insights discovery now or do it after, but either way, the next module I will take you through is module two.

Well, this takes us to module two, which is communication for success. Now this one, again, you can do this first, and then do insights discovery, or do it vice-versa. It may work well just to do it this way, because it builds the foundation for communication. One of the points to make right now is that this is very important, before we get to module three, because in module three you're going to have to talk about performance, and so we want to talk about some of the styles of communication, and of course the barriers to communication.

There's one video clip in this one, and so we begin with the first slide, which is this one. It's called communication 101, and what it demonstrates is really just a basic model of communication. This one is not original, it's been around for a very long time, but let the group know that if they are the boss, the manager, the leader, their job is to have communication with their direct reports.

In this model, you see the sender, that would be them, and their job is to talk to the receiver, that's a direct report, about something in their performance. To be able to do that, it's nothing more than an exchange of messages. That's the important point to make here, is that you exchange messages back and forth.

The first step in this process is that you encode the message, which means you wrap it up in a way that hopefully the receiver will understand. The encoding is really important, because if that's not done correctly, then the decoding, which is the listening, is not going to get done right either.

The sender sends the message to the receiver, receiver decodes it, they listen, they re-encode their response, send it back to the sender, who now becomes the receiver, and the loop goes round and round. The question to ask your group right now is how often does it really work this well?

Of course, they're going to say the answer is rarely, which is normal. If that's true, then we've got to figure out what the barriers to communication are. We have two barriers that we're going to talk about in module two. The first one is what happens between an organization, and then the second one is what happens inside of a person's head.

Let's begin with the organization first, using a model known as the Johari window. What I would recommend is that you have a flip chart there, and just draw this up on the flip chart, and work your people through it. If you don't have a flip chart, then you could turn to the next page, because the next page then actually has the thing drawn out for you.

Again, I think it would be better if you draw it out, but if you do draw it out, this is what you're going to be drawing anyway, so choose to show whichever slide you want here. You could also remove this one. The Johari window has been around for a very long time, and so you can tell the group it's named Johari window because, in a sense, it looks like a window frame.

The second reason is that it's the founders, the creators, they glued their first names together. Joe Luft, and Harry Ingham, so for whatever that's worth, they might find that interesting. The thing about the Johari window is that what it does is describes four conditions of communication.

The first one, which is represented in the top left corner, contains two things. It contains the things that I know, that is me as the leader, things about myself, about my team, about the department, about the organization, and it also contains all the things others know, and that's the things others know about me, our department, everything like that.

We call it the arena, because in an arena, think about a sports arena, even if the seats are really high up, you can still see the entire thing play out. That's the healthiest of the quadrants here, and the healthiest of the windows in the Johari window, and just look to note that unfortunately, it's very rare that this one is large.

What starts to impact it then, is the next window, the next pane of the window, which is to the right, and that is what we call the blind spot. It contains all the things that others know, but I don't know anything. It can be embarrassing, it can be very frustrating, and if you've ever said, and you can tell the group this, "Hey, how come I'm always the last one to hear things?"

You're probably in the blind spot. It continues to get worse still, because the bottom left pane of the window is all the things that I know about myself, about my team, everything else, but unfortunately, it contains all the things others don't know. You could use several examples here. I usually ask the group, "Think back to 1985, and when you heard the name Bill Cosby. What comes to mind?"

Of course everybody says America's dad, and Jello, and all those things, but now what comes to mind when you hear Bill Cosby, and that's predator. Sometimes there are things that we know, that we're not disclosing, and sometimes there's a reason for that, but oftentimes if it's something that comes out later, then trust is broken.

The façade can be really dangerous too. The final pane of the window, the bottom right, contains all the things I don't know, and all the things you don't know. We call that the unknown, which is the most unhealthy pane of the whole thing. Make the point here that in the absence of information, people tend to fill in the blanks, and they fill in the blanks most often with something that can be negative.

You can give examples that you've seen, when maybe the executive team comes around, suddenly everybody assumes something bad's going to happen. I don't know anything, so I assume the worst. What you can do in this exercise, I always use different stories and examples, think of some for yourself.

I had a group I worked with a long time ago, where the workers were just overwhelmingly overworked, and just slammed with all sorts of projects, and the CEO was completely clueless to the whole thing. He thought if he wasn't slamming them with work, that they wouldn't trust him anymore.

They were too afraid to give him feedback, and they were giving off the façade that they were okay with the work, and so the CEO is completely clueless, and the organization was really struggling. So think about some examples you could use here, and just let everybody know that sometimes just the dynamics of the organization may communication breakdown, and [La Grande 00:05:59] is one of those that it's nationwide, worldwide.

It's made of acquisitions, there's probably, in many of the acquired companies, that sense of, "Oh my gosh, what's going to happen? We're about to be acquired. We're going to lose our jobs." So they've probably experienced what this is like. As leaders, their job is to inform, and to be open and honest.

That's going to fix these problems. So that's your first barrier to communication.

The second barrier to communication is what causes a breakdown inside of your own head, and so we get to a video clip for this one. The video clip we're going to use is from the movie First Blood, which is the first of the Rambo movies, and what you can do here is just let them know, "We're going to take a look at a video clip," and ask them how many have seen the movie.

You'll be amazed at how many people have not, so what you may want to do is set the scene up. "I'll set the scene up for you, and then I'll show you the video, and then we'll debrief it. In this movie, John Rambo is a Vietnam vet who is in search of some of his last living army buddies from Vietnam.

He goes up to the Pacific North West, he's looking up his last remaining former teammate, and found out the guy died of cancer. He's just figuring out what he's going to do next, he's a bit of a drifter, and the scene picks up when the sheriff sees him, and watch how this plays out, and ask yourself what went wrong? So check out the video, and then we'll debrief it."

All right, so the point to make here is that the sheriff, and you can ask the group, "Why was the sheriff so intimidated?"

And they'll say, "Well, because the guy looked like he was trouble."

And then you could ask them, "All right, if you saw the movie, did John Rambo eventually cause trouble?"

And the answer is, "Of course." Because if you watched the movie, you know that they arrested him, they threw him in jail, and then he flipped out, and burned the town to the ground. Ask them, "If that's true, then was the sheriff a good judge of character?"

Of course the answer is no. The sheriff created his own problem. So that brings us to two models that address the things that go on in our own heads that cause a barrier to communication, and the first one, you can let the group know, "We decided to name these after 1970s classic rock songs. The first one is of course the Highway to Hell."

So the way the model works, the Highway to Hell model, is that all of us start with observable data. Ask the group, "When the sheriff saw John Rambo, what was the first thing he saw?"

They'll say, "His long hair, his flag on his jacket."

And say, "No, no, no. The first thing he did is he looked out the window, and saw a man walking." And there's a lot of studies by psychiatrists and psychologists that say that when a human walks into a room, they tend to look up and down, side to side, and then notice gender and skin color.

Really, the sheriff looked out the window, and saw a white man walking, but then we go to the second step on the Highway to Hell, which was selection. He began to pick things out, and the danger of the selection phase here is that we often would use an unconscious bias.

The sheriff had an issue with Vietnam vets, he had an issue with drifters, and so he picked out the things that fit his profile, the flag on the jacket, and you can let the group know too, that you've got to go back to 1982 when this movie was released. That was still people not having any respect for the military.

They were still dealing with post-Vietnam. That was a long time ago. Nowadays of course, you see a military person, and you thank them for their service, and buy them a drink. Back then, and I was in the navy back then, and I remember this, there was very little respect from civilians.

So let them know that he picked out those things, and then he made some assumptions, like he was trouble, and you can even... the scene in there when he frisks him, and pulls that knife out. If you know your John Rambo movies, of course he hunts with a knife, but the sheriff thought he was in there to cause trouble.

All of those things make up this decision to arrest him, and throw him in jail, and beat him up. That was the action he took, and of course that resulted in him burning down the town. We've got to be careful, and where this will come back to haunt your audience, is when they're sitting down doing reviews, and they get someone who's been a troublemaker for the last few years, and they refuse to look past all of that data.

It means starting with an open mind. That takes us to the second of our communication models here, and that is, again, 1970s classic rock, the Stairway to Heaven. This is a better way to approach it. First of all, we of course begin with observable data, but then the next step is thoughtful selection.

This is asking yourself, "Why am I picking out the flag on the jacket? Is it because I have some hangout?" This is a lot of introspection. Approach it with curiosity. We could replay this, and the sheriff did it right, and he might say, "Hey. You going somewhere?"

"Yeah."

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to see one of my army buddies, and I found out he died of cancer."

"Man, that sucks. That's bad."

And then John might say, "Hey, you got somewhere I can eat?"

He'd say, "Yeah, there's a place right over here, let me drive you over there. Thank you for your service." Could've gone much better, but the sheriff led with his unconscious bias, and so that means we have to approach things with curiosity, not assumption.

Ask open-ended questions, rather than something that's closed in, and then make a wise decision, and action. This takes a lot of work, and it can be very difficult to do, so let your audience know they've got to just be prepared for that. Once you get through those, then we've got to go back, and have good conversations.

What's going to be neat about this is now you're going to go back, and do some activities. You will find in your package, with all the things we're going to send you, there is some colored cards, and they're going to be used for these activities, and so we're going to do some activities around the encoding and the decoding.

What's going to be neat about this is now you're going to go back, and do some activities. You will find in your package, with all the things we're going to send you, there is some colored cards, and they're going to be used for these activities, and so we're going to do some activities around the encoding and the decoding.

Remember, the first challenge is that we have to encode the message in a way that the receiver can get it. For that, we start with one of our dumb training games, we like to call them, because that's what people often refer to them as. What we do is we start with a game that is going to require them to go ahead, and break up into teams of two.

So if there's an odd number, that would work. There should only be one odd number, so groups of two, and then you're going to have the group determine, say, "Okay, of the two of you in the group, which of you is the better communicator? Just pick somebody. No big deal."

Then what you'll do is you'll ask the group, "How many of you know what a playlist is?"

And they'll say, "Yeah, like on Spotify."

And you say, "Good, well I have a playlist for you. We call this the La Grande top 10. Look at the playlist, and see if you recognize any of the songs." Of course, they will, and then say, "Okay, what we're going to do now is the person that has been already identified as the top communicator in your group of two, what they're going to do is I want them to pick out their favorite song on the list, but not tell you what it is."

So they'll pick it out, and say, "Okay, now in a moment, you're going to perform that song for your partner." And everybody kind of freaks out, and you say, "No, no, don't worry about it. All you have to do when I tell you to do it, is to tap the song out on the table. You got it?"

They say, "Yeah."

Say, "Okay. Tappers, you tap. Listeners, when you get the song right, your tapper will let you know," and then let them begin. It gets kind of noisy, they're banging on the desk, and a few of them get it right away, and then let it go for maybe about 15 seconds, and say, "Okay, everybody stop. How many of you are still working on it?"

And there'll be a few hands that go up, and say, "Okay. Let me make a suggestion here. Why don't you try tapping it slower and louder?" So let them go, and let it go for maybe five, seven seconds, and say, "Okay, everybody stop. How many of you are still working on it?"

Usually there's one or two, and so then you can debrief it, and say, "All right, well, let's think about this for a minute. How many of you who were tapping, could hear the song in your head?"

And the answer, they'll say, "Yeah, we did."

Say, "So when you were tapping it, were you looking at your partner thinking, 'jeez, are you stupid or what, because you can't hear this.' Keep in mind that all they had was disconnected taps on the table," and that's the point we want to make with encoding. If I have in my mind, what it's supposed to be that I'm communicating, and I haven't bothered to listen to how the other person takes their information in, all it's going to sound like is disconnected taps on the desk.

The key to encoding is putting yourself in the mind of the other person. How do I explain things so they would understand it? You can use examples. I see this a lot when military people are transitioning out of the military, and they write their resume with their military jargon, not realizing that a civilian recruiter is not going to know what three fourths of that stuff is.

We have to be able to translate it. This will really be applicable when you're giving feedback on performance, so let them know we've got to consider the other person, and encode our message so that they can understand it. In fact, that's what we refer to as the curse of knowledge, and so you'll see that in the work book, when there's the page number there, the curse of knowledge.

What that means is we know so much that we're unwilling to consider the other person may not know what we know. Then we flip over, and we do the decoding piece, so you keep them in their pairs, and now what you'll do is you'll pull out the blue card. The blue card, just tell them, "If you were tapping in the last round, put up your hand. I'm going to hand you a blue card, keep it face down."

So they'll keep it face down. Now what you'll say is, "In a moment, the person who was actually listening last time, they're going to talk to the person with the blue card about one item on their bucket list," and ask them if they know what a bucket list is, and so then let the person with the blue card know, "In a moment, you're going to just lift the card up.

Don't show your partner what the instruction is, and then when I say go, you're going to do what that instruction is while your partner is talking." So if you look at the card, it'll say something along the lines of act distracted, bored, and don't really pay attention.

Tell them, "Okay, look at your card." They look at it, and say, "Okay, put the card down. Those of you who are talking, talk about your bucket list." Let it go for maybe two minutes or so. Not even that long, about one minute, you're going to start to hear people laughing, because you're going to watch them looking at their phone, and looking away, and so then stop.

Tell them, "Okay, everybody stop," and then ask the question, have your flip chart ready, a red marker would work well here, and say, "If you were talking in round one, did you feel like you got listened to? They'll say, "No."

Say, "Why was that?"

Then they'll tell you, "There was no eye contact, they were looking at their shoe, they were just staring at me."

Write those down, and say, "Was that a pleasant experience?"

They say, "No."

Say, "This is just a stupid game, so go ahead, and show your partner what's on the card," and then they'll show them, and they'll laugh, and say, "You know, we often refer to this as multitasking." I'm in my office working, and someone has a question, and I say, "Yeah, yeah, I hear you," but it doesn't appear that way, so we've got to be very careful that we don't do that, and we've got to be fully in the moment, especially when we want to talk about performance.

Then tell them that, "We're going to play a second round of this game," and then say, "You know what they say about payback," so what you'll do now is take the orange card, and pass that to the people that don't have a card, and if there's a group of three, then you'll give a card to two of the three people, and one will be talking, and both people will do it.

And so what you do, is put the orange card down, and say, "Okay, we're going to reverse the roles. On the orange card is a decoding instruction. So if you have a blue card, in a moment, you're going to talk to your partner about something on your bucket list. Those with the orange card now, you can look at the card, don't show your partner."

What is says is 'argue with the speaker, and contradict them'. Say, "Okay, begin," and this one gets really loud, so let it go for maybe 30 seconds, and then pull them together, and ask them, "How many of you felt like you got listened to?" And some will say, "I did."

And you say, "Okay, that's interesting," and then a lot of them will say, "No, they contradicted, they were negative," and then show them the card, and say, "Some people, this is their style of communication. They tend to want to argue, because it's how they feel like they get their point across, and so if this is you, just keep in mind that it could have the opposite effect."

Then tell them, "Okay, we're going to play one more round of this game, and for this round, we'll go back to the original pairings. So if you had a blue card, I'm going to give you some decoding instructions. The instructions are so powerful that I can't put them on a card. I'm going to have to give them to you verbally, so in a moment, I want those of you with a blue card to go outside the room with me. Now if you are in the room, I want you to think about the saddest movie you ever saw, and when your partner gets back, you're going to talk to them about the saddest movie you ever saw."

They'll giggle a little bit, so take the group out, shut the door, and then be very specific with the instructions. Let them know that in round three, we're going to practice active listening. Ask them if they know what it is, and most of them will know, and say, "We're going to do two specific things here. The first thing we want to do is, as you're watching your partner as they're talking, pay attention to their body language, and very subtly move into the same posture. Now it's not every gesture, but if they lean in, you'll wait a moment, and you'll lean in.

If they lean back, and cross their leg, you don't do it immediately. We call that mirroring, and mirroring is a very powerful technique that you use when you want to build rapport. It's non-verbal." So ask them if they understand, and say, "The second thing I want you to do is pay attention to how they're talking to you, and very subtly, you want to use the same tone of voice, the speed, and the pitch. We call that pace matching. Pace matching done correctly, is a very powerful verbal communication technique."

And so let them know that you're not going to pace match the accent if they have one, but what you will do is, if they talk low and slow, you'll talk low and slow, and so on. Then ask them, "Do you have any questions?"

They say, "No," and then you've kind of got to play this up.

You say, "Oh, one more thing before we go in. Don't pay attention to their story, just focus on the techniques, and see if there's a better outcome. Are you ready?"

"Yeah."

Okay, then you go in, and so as you walk in the room, and I recommend you walk in first, tell them, "Okay, in a moment your listener is going to sit down, and when they do, you're going to talk to them about the saddest movie you ever saw, so you can begin."

It'll take a moment for them to get into it, and then it's going to get kind of quiet in the room, and you're going to watch them doing their mirroring and pace matching, and you're going to see... I've seen it before. Some people begin to cry, and it's really interesting to watch it play out.

Let it run for a couple of minutes, and then call them together. While they're doing this, go to your flip chart where you've made the list in red, and you could draw a line down the middle, and then make a second list using the green marker. Stop them, and say, "All right, if you were talking in round three, did you feel like you got listened to?"

They usually say, "Yes."

And say, "How did you know?"

"Well they had eye contact, they were nodding, they were smiling, they were asking good questions." Some of them may say, "I think they were copying me," because they'll be onto it, but if they do it right, it's going to be very powerful. Then you can reveal, so you could say, "All right, for somebody who was out there, what was the first technique that I told you?"

Have the group tell them, it was mirroring, and you can build on it, and say, "Mirroring is not every gesture, and if they're angry, we don't want to mirror. But if we're really trying to build rapport, that is a very useful thing," and you can use the Mehrabian studies.

In their notebook, there's a thing where there's some percents, and so let them know, in the 60s, Albert Mehrabian used to study communication techniques for influence, and he found that three techniques worked. The first was the words themselves, the second was the tone of voice, and the third was the non-verbal.

What he discovered is that the words themselves only accounted for 7% of the success, but the non-verbal counted for 55. So you could draw that on a flip chart. I draw it like a pie graph, and let them know that mirroring helps to build that non-verbal.

Then ask the group, "What was the second technique I told you outside?" And let one of them tell you it was pace matching, and let them know, pace matching is a verbal technique. So you could go back to the Mehrabian studies, and say that they found that 38% of success was to the tone of voice, which is where the pace matching really benefits.

Let them know again, "Don't do accents, and don't do it when they're shouting," because that doesn't work either. Let them know, "These are just some things that you could implement that really work."

And then what you could do then is to go through their list, and so ask them, "Is eye contact always a good idea?"

They'll say, "No."

Say, "What examples?" Like sometimes cultures, and like if somebody's angry, but then say, "What about staring?"

And they'll say, "No, of course not." Then teach them the technique of gazing. In the workbook, there's a picture of two heads looking at each other, and the technique of gazing, you could draw it on a flip chart. I don't know if you've seen me do it. Just say what you're doing when you talk to a person is that you're right eye is basically looking at their right eye, but your noses are lined up.

Let them know they can practice this by talking to themselves in a mirror, but it's a really good way to make eye contact without staring. Then with the nodding, let them know that in some cultures, nodding could mean something very different, and a lot of people agree that when women nod, it means they're just hearing you.

They're not necessarily agreeing, so you could give some examples that way. And then if there's any other thing that needs to be talked about, then do that, and then as you wind down, just end with this, and say, "For those of you who were outside with me getting the instructions, do you remember what the last instruction was that I gave you?"

Some of them will remember. They say, "Yeah, you told us not to pay attention to the story, focus on the techniques."

And you'll say, "Yes. How many of you actually disobeyed me?"

And they all did, and you say, "I did that to throw a monkey wrench in your plan too, because we have found that when you are very determined to listen, and you do these techniques, you will be a much better listener," and that's going to be super important as we begin to build in module three, driving results, on how to have these difficult performance management questions.

So it's a great module. You could now step into insights discovery, or if not, if you've already done it, then go ahead and move into module three.

Well, welcome to module three. In my opinion, module three is the most important module in all of LEAP, mainly because it helps a person actually develop people and we know that from the previous modules when we did the management triangle, that third area is developing others. It's also helpful to have this one now because you've already done the basic communication and if you've done your insights discovery, now they understand their behavior styles. And so you're ready to roll with this module. So we begin this module by looking at a video clip. And the video clip is a clip from the British version of the TV show The Office. And so have your audience, just tell them to watch it and say, this is an example of a performance conversation and let me know if you think this was effective. So take a look at the video.

Well, welcome to module three. In my opinion, module three is the most important module in all of LEAP, mainly because it helps a person actually develop people and we know that from the previous modules when we did the management triangle, that third area is developing others. It's also helpful to have this one now because you've already done the basic communication and if you've done your insights discovery, now they understand their behavior styles. And so you're ready to roll with this module. So we begin this module by looking at a video clip. And the video clip is a clip from the British version of the TV show The Office. And so have your audience, just tell them to watch it and say, this is an example of a performance conversation and let me know if you think this was effective. So take a look at the video.

The way that we debrief the video is that you ask them, first of all, was this a good conversation? And of course they'll say the answer is no. And then ask them, is this Keith's fault? Is this the manager's fault? Is it the organization's fault? And what they'll probably say is it's all three. And that's correct. And so let them know that at Legrand, you have a performance management system with a series of evaluations and that's important that you document, but the real key is going to be the conversation. And so what you saw in the video was Keith basically not having any idea of goals, any idea of what good performance would look like. You also get the feeling that maybe this is the first time that Keith and his manager have even sat down together to have a conversation. And the way I like to debrief this is to say that if Keith was on trial accused of being an employee at this company, based on that conversation, is there enough evidence to convict him? And of course the answer is no. There isn't.

So that should lead you into the next part of this module where we talk about the importance of the conversation and great performance. And so we'll begin with, I think the most valuable tool they're going to get in the course and that is our three-legged stool of great performance. So what we're going to do is we're going to go through all three legs, and I like to begin this by asking them, in a three-legged stool model where all three legs are evenly balanced, what happens when we remove one? And of course the answer is the whole thing falls down. So then you can ask the audience, all right, if we're looking at great performance then, how would we measure it? And the answer is we're going to use this tool right here. Let them know that there are three legs to great performance. And we use this by asking the employee a series of questions. It all begins when an employee gives you performance that is less than what you expected.

The first question you ask yourself is, do you even know what you're doing? And if the answer is no, we've just discovered the problem. The problem is a problem of skill. The skill leg is strong when the employee knows what it is they're supposed to be doing. And so then you ask the question, if somebody has a skill problem, how do you suppose we would fix it? The answer of course is we would use training. And let them know that training has a key piece of performance management, but only if there's a skill deficiency.

But let them know there's another leg of the three-legged stool that becomes a bigger problem and that is this one. When a person knows what it is they ought to do, they just don't want to do it.

Now, you can ask the group, how would we fix this? If training fixes skill, what would fix will? And of course they're going to say things like motivation or encouragement, or maybe a new job. Some may say discipline, punishment, whatever it is. Say, all of you are correct. And we are going to address this when we get to module four, which is on employee engagement. So we're not going to spend a lot of time on it now, but we will get there.

Which brings us to the third leg of our three-legged stool of great performance, which happens to be the leg of focus. Now, the leg of focus becomes an issue when somebody knows what it is they ought to be doing and they really want to do it, but for some reason, they're still not successful. Now, I'll give you two tools in here that will help you figure that out, but maybe the best thing to do is have them watch a video clip.

And so we're going to take a look at the video clip, a video clip from the movie, The Blind Side. So what I usually do with video clips is I ask, first of all, how many of you have seen the movie, The Blind side? And usually most hands will go up, but say, you know what? Before we show it, let me set up the scene for you. This is a story based on a true story of a young man in Memphis, Tennessee who is adopted by a family and he's going to play football at this private school. And so we're going to pick up the story here where the guy, his name is Michael Oher is doing his first day of tackle football practice. Watch what happens and watch what his adopted mom does, and then we'll discuss on how she handled a focus problem. So let's go ahead and watch the video and you can watch it right now.

So the first question to ask in the debrief is, did Michael Oher have the natural skill to play football? And of course the answer is yes. And then ask, did he want to play? And the answer is yes, he did. But he wasn't successful. So the first debrief question I think that really works well is, what type of problem did the coach think Michael Oher had? Now, the correct answer is, he thought it was a skill problem. So remember he took him aside and showed him how to hold without the referee seeing it. He treated it like a skill problem. But now we know that his adopted mom's side has a focus problem. And by the way, the remedy for a focus problem is coaching feedback and mentoring. So we know will is motivation discipline, training is for skills, but focus is more around coaching.

She truly coached him. She helped him create a solution. And so what she did is she reframed it. She said that he is naturally a protective person and he needed to think about the team as his family and he was protecting them. So let them know that focus is going to be a little bit of a different animal to deal with, but there's a couple ways we can deal with it. The first way we can deal with it is we can ask ourselves, does the employee align with the corporation's values? So this would be an opportunity for you to bring in Legrand's values and talk about how a person's behavior needs to line up with those. A person can be highly skilled and motivated, but if they can't perform according to values, it's not going to be a really good fit.

Now, there's a second way that we could look at focus factors and that is with this tool that you find in page three of driving results. And so you can explain how to use this. This is a completely optional tool and it may be useful just for them to kind of eyeball a situation. And of course they can use it when they do their one on ones. So the way we use this tool is that we've identified six focus factors. Now, the important thing to notice when you're using this tool is that we don't look at the person in the job. We actually have to look at the job itself and pretend if the current person in the job was gone and we could completely rewrite this script, what would a perfect fit look like for the job? Now, notice in the focus factor tool there are six focus factors. There's communication, self structure, perspective, relationship, work style and mindset. And you'll notice that there's an extreme that goes up and an extreme that goes down.

So for example, in the communication focus factor, there are some jobs that require you to be more assertive, which is comfortable telling others what it is you want. There are other jobs, however, where it's better if you're more reflective, if you're more comfortable asking for what it is that you want. So the example I like to use is ask the group, if we were going to hire a new salesperson, where do you think you would want them on the communication focus factor? And they'll of course say hire assertive. And then you'll say, but what if we were hiring somebody to sell caskets at a funeral home? And of course they'll laugh and say, well, you'd want somebody more reflective. Now, if we had somebody who was an expert selling caskets, how successful would they be selling refrigerators and TVs over at Best Buy? And the answer is, they probably would not because for them, they're just comfortable being a little bit on the quiet side.

So our job as managers is we have to look at the job itself and then find out if the person in the job aligns with the focus factor. And remember that the key to dissolving focus factor problems is coaching. And your second focus factor is self-structure. There are certain jobs that require you to multitask. And if there's others that require you to single task, do one perfect start to finish before moving onto the next. So I always ask the groups, if we were going to hire somebody to diffuse explosives, where would we want them? And of course it would be single task. Do it perfect before we move on to the next. Third one is perspective. The extreme up is visionary. Big picture thinking. The extreme down is realistic in the details.

So you could ask this, you could say, where would it be a perfect fit for John Selldorff on the executive team at Legrand? Of course, visionary. Their job is to see big picture. In fact, they're probably doing that right now as people are in LEAP. They are probably planning thinking about, where does Legrand have to go in the next five to 10 years? But in their world, a lot of these guys are frontline supervisors. Their perspective needs to be realistic. Gun on the details. That's what they're supposed to be doing. Fourth focus factor is relationships. That's how we make decisions. There are some that require you to have an emotional appeal and then there's others that require you to be more rational. So you could use the example of a brain surgeon. They would have to be somebody more rational, but then they would have to be emotional when maybe they talk to the patient's family.

The fifth focus factor is the work style. Some jobs require teamwork where we have to work well with others and others individual, we have to work well by ourselves. So this is a little tricky one and for many of your audience, they're going to be recently promoted from just team members and what they're going to miss is the ability to work with others, and now they have to move away from that. Their former peers are people that they can't really associate with anymore. So it's very important to let them know, this job being a manager is oftentimes an individual job, which is why they really need at this LEAP event to connect with others. And the beauty of LEAP is that you get people from all different locations. It's important that they stay connected as a cohort so they can use each other to bounce ideas off of because they may not have the teamwork they really desire.

Last focus factor is the mindset. That's the attitude they have to head towards the world in general. Some people see it as optimistic. We are looking for the best possible outcome. Pessimism is different and don't think of it as negative. Pessimism simply means that we trust, but verify. So ask themselves, as a manager, where you think it should be? And they'll say, trust, but verify. So the key here is that they can use this for themselves to see how well they're developing. One thing that I do sometimes with LEAP, and you can do this too, if you have this projected on a screen, you could ask them, as a manager at Legrand, where do you see the ideal focus pattern? And then ask them, where do you see yourself? And so where you see gaps in this, this is where there's a coaching opportunity and they're going to learn how to do coaching in this module. So everything will start to fit together.

Well, we have an example that you're free to use here. And so this was a client that I had worked with a number of years ago, and what they wanted to do is have this new position, it was the director of contracts. And so what was really neat about this is I happened to be there working with them and he says, it's a new position. This is the CFO. He says a new position and he really wants to get the right person in the job. So I asked him if he knew what the ideal fit would be and he had no idea what it was talking about. So I had him use the online tool and this is what he came up with after going through multiple paired statements. The ideal fit for the director of contracts would be somebody who is moderately assertive, who could multitask, but they were focusing on details, they made decisions rationally, they worked well by themselves, there was no team, and they had to trust but verify. Well, he loved it. He thought it was great.

And then he told me he thought he had the perfect candidate who is an internal hire. And I said, "Well, why is she perfect?" And he said, "Well, she's really smart and she's really motivated." And I said, "Just for fun, let's have her take the assessment. This is online." So she did it and this has done blind. You don't know what the right answer is. So her results are the ones in orange. So just put this up and ask the group to see, all right, what are your thoughts here? And people will say, well, she's not a good fit. This is how you can debrief it. And this is what I had to do with the CFO.

I told him 'cause he said, "Well, what does this mean?" I said, "Well, let me give you an example. Let's say that you have a vendor and that person is two months late on deliverables. So you call Alice Maxfield, she's your director of contracts and say, "Alice, get on the phone and tell those people, if I don't get my delivery by this Friday, we are never doing business with them again."" Alice says, "I don't know if you know this, but they're a small family-owned business. They're having cash flow problems right now. The matriarch of the family just died and they called me yesterday to ask for an extension and I told him they could have an additional two months." Well, of course the CFO got upset. He said, "Well, that won't happen." I said, "Well, according to this, that's exactly what's going to happen."

So you can actually ask them, is this problem fixable? And the answer is, it is, but it's going to require you to coach Alice. And the thing is if Alice tells you, "I don't know if I can do this", now we're back to a will problem and we're going to address will problems in the next module. So it's a useful tool. I think that you'll appreciate it and you can take some time to play around with it. Now, that leads us to another video clip. So let them know, we're going to watch a video clip from the classic TV series I Love Lucy. And as you watch Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory on the first day of the job, you're going to see that they are not successful. So ask yourself as you watch this, is this a skill, a will, or a focus problem? And then after the video, we'll debrief it and I'll give you another tool that puts another context to it. So let's watch the video.

All right, so the way we're going to debrief this video is by having them look at the model on page four and that is a model that puts the context of skill, will and focus into a different spin. What you're going to do here is let them know that depending on where a person is in their development, their level of skill, will and focus is going to change. And so we can look at Lucy and Ethel through this lens and they can also think about themselves. And the way to debrief the model..

And ask them too before we get to this, did Lucy and Ethel want to do a good job? And the answer is, of course they did. But there was a real disconnect between the manager and the task and the process. And so you'll find that that manager actually was a good manager. It just that she was not coordinated in what her style should be. So we can use that as an example.

We begin in the middle of this model and that's the compass, the skill, will and focus, and then we have the inner ring that says assessment, inquiry in mastery. Let the group know that this is a responsibility all of us have on a regular basis to do a self assessment of how we're doing professionally. And then once we identify gaps, and of course they'll be doing this with their direct reports, say, you're doing well on this, but here's an area that you need to get better. The next question is, how do I get better? That's inquiry. And once you've identified the training program, the coaching, whatever it is, that task has to be mastered. But to get there, they have to go through these rounds of development.

And so let's talk about the rounds of development. You'll notice that in each round, the level of skill, will and focus is different. The outside ring in dark, bold print is the style of feedback and coaching that they're going to need to give the person to get them through this. So we begin in round one. Round one is where the skill, will and focus appears to be high. And if you watched the Lucy video, you'll notice when they first started, they were all excited. They're like, "We got this." Remember? And I think that the manager did a pretty good job. She oriented them on what the process would be. And I think once the belt started, they realized very quickly they were in round two. Their skill and focus was low, but they were still motivated. They're like, "Wow, this is different." Unfortunately, there was no intervention from the manager. And then they hit round three, this is where the chocolate was coming really too fast.

Skill, will and focus were both low. Now they started to panic. They got frustrated. But the challenge was, when the manager came in, she told him, "Hey, you're doing great. Let's speed it up a little bit." You see what they really needed in round three was to be micromanaged and I know that that's a word that your audience is not going to like, but let them know that micromanagement when used properly is the best possible thing you could have. Now, the example I like to use and you're free to use it or change it, is have them think about this. Let's say you go to the beach and you're a pretty good swimmer and you decide to swim out and you get stuck out a little bit too far and you get stuck in a rip tide. So the harder you're swimming in, the further out you get pulled in. So in a moment of desperation, you call for help.

The lifeguard jumps out at the tower, runs down to the water, and he picks up the bullhorn. He says, "Okay, you got this. Just think happy thoughts. You can do this. You're doing a fine job. You'll be just fine." And then ask the group, "Is that what you want?" And they'll say, "No, we want you to come and get us." And say, "You know what? That's what micromanagement is. The reason none of you like it is that you've had this happen to you when you didn't need it. So you could build on the example. Let's say you're a pretty good swimmer and you're swimming laps at the YMCA. You stop to empty the water out of your goggles and the lifeguard blows the whistle, tries to pull you to the side of the pool, tells you to get out 'cause you don't know how to swim. What do you tell him? You're like, "Leave me alone. I'm fine." That's how most of us have experienced micromanagement. It's great when you're drowning, but if you know how to swim, you don't need it."

So let them know micromanage is not a bad word. How you use it can make it a bad word. Lucy and Ethel needed to be micromanaged when the belt was coming too fast. They needed everybody to stop and the manager to reset everything. You can also let the group know that typically in anything new, about six to eight weeks in, they're going to hit round three. It's a totally normal experience. It happens not only in promotions, it happens in a new job and even it happens in relationships. And I use the example, this is like you discover six to eight weeks in that she doesn't like bacon as much as she said or she discovers you don't like watching The Notebook as much as you said you did.

So this is where the wheels tend to come off. Now, we've got to do better in round two. Have that manager spent more time training Lucy and Ethel, their stay in round three would have been very quick. If we can get someone through round three, get them to four, this is where things start to get better. And in round four, notice that skill, will and focus are moderate and that's where the approach becomes coaching. Now, they're going to learn more about coaching later in this module, but let them know that coaching is working with a person to cocreate solutions. It's not to tell them what to do. That's very different than micromanage, but you can't mix and match these styles. A coaching approach is not going to work as somebody is drowning. If we can get them through four, then the goal is to get them to five. Notice in round five that skill, will and focus are truly high.

Your role is simply to support and encourage them. And ask your group, what would life be like for you if all of your direct reports were in round five? And they're going to say it would be awesome. Let them know it's possible, but you're going to have to work at it and the rest of this module is going to help you do that. Now, one final parallel to the Lucy video, you can let them know that when Lucy and Ethel were in round three, the manager treated them like they were in round five. Remember, fine, you're doing great. Let's speed it up. So you can't mix and match the styles. That Lucy video is a great one to use.

Beware of around six. This happens often when you have superstars because they'll outgrow you and you have to realize that's a possibility. You'll know they're in round six when they've been a great performer, but suddenly, their will begins to fall and their focus goes up and down. And that's where we want to engage them in a conversation and say, "We've noticed that you don't seem as motivated to help us understand what's going on." And maybe they'll say, "Well, I feel like I'm outgrowing you. I need a new challenge." Just remember any new challenge you give them is going to take them into round one at a higher level. But the more times you go around the circle, the more valuable you become. So we'll stop it there and we'll pick up part two of module three after the break.

Let's take a look at the second part of Module Three. Again, Module Three is probably the most important and most impactful module in the entire program. It should take you probably maybe three hours at minimum to get done. We start with the second part of this and we open up to the model here. What we've done is we've put together a model of a typical performance management cycle. What you can do is you can show them this and say, "We've got a calendar that looks a little bit like a clock." Think about this. If I was a 10-year-old boy, at what point in the year would I have to be on my best behavior? Of course, everybody would say, "Probably December." You'd say, "Exactly."

The thing is, a lot of employees view performance management just like that. They look at the meeting as the reward, and so they're going to always be on their best behavior just before that. But in our world it's very important that people have great performance throughout the entire year. For that reason, let them know, even though you only have maybe one mandatory meeting year or twice, that if you do this on a quarterly basis you would ensure that there's great performance throughout the year. You can refer back to the clip from The Office and let them know. We saw what happens already if you have just one meeting a year. The quality of that meeting is going to be important too.

What we're going to do is we're going to think about the two most important things that should happen on a regular basis. The first is what we call a look back, a look back at previous performance. Maybe what we do is we give feedback. Feedback is where we address gaps. We can talk about what we liked, but more importantly what needs to be improved. The second thing that should happen is a look forward in the next three months or whatever timeframe until the next meeting. Here's some things that need to get done and I'm going to help you by coaching you.

Now, we use the analogy of the boss hat and the coach hat. I think those are important. A lot of people don't like giving negative feedback, but it's an important part of what you need to do. For that reason, we suggest just pretend it's a hat that you have to put on. You put the boss hat on, you take care of that really uncomfortable business. Then you can take the hat off. You might put the coach hat on. That's when you do something that may be more enjoyable. A lot of people say that they actually like the idea of coaching employees. They find it to be enjoyable and productive and rewarding, and so they're going to learn to do both and leap.

We're going to start first with wearing the boss hat and then we're going to take a look at the coach hat. We break them down like this. You can see this when you go from side to side that these are contrasting statements. The boss, they're more directive and more diagnostic, but the coach is more supportive using curiosity rather than assumption. They're going to see this a lot when they do the coaching piece. Let them know, one is not better than the other. They're both equally important but they're very different. With the boss hat, you're asking closed questions. Did you do it? Yes or no? But then with the coach it's different. We explore options. Tell me a better way to do this. We would be working to create solutions. The boss hat focuses on improvement. Let's fix a problem. But the coach helps develop so that we can prevent the problem. You can read the rest. But they're very different, both equally important.

We're going to start with the boss hat. That's feedback. Here's some general rules of feedback. First of all, let them know that it's important that we make it a regular event. If you just save it up for the twice-a-year review meeting, people are going to learn to really be afraid of that meeting. We want to make it a regular event, positive and negative feedback. Say it when you see it means that both things need to be done in the moment. Don't wait an entire year or three months or six months to give corrective feedback. Do it in the moment. In the same, don't wait for the quarter to give good feedback. We want to do that as it happens so people are going to be more apt to want to keep doing it.

Finally, be sincere. Earlier in the beginning module we talked about the importance of building rapport. If rapport is built, then people should know that as the boss you generally want the best for them and you genuinely want the best for them. Be sincere. If you say this, they'll know that it's for their own good. Just be sure that you give clarity on what you're going to give feedback on. It has to be very, very clear to them.

Now, we're going to take a look at the two types of feedback. We're going to start with the fun one, and that is positive feedback. What we've done is we've come up with two acronyms that will be very useful for your audience. Before we get to that, let's talk about some basics. First of all, be specific. Don't just tell them, "Hey. You're doing a great job." Say, "I really like the way you did," blank. Be enthusiastic. Get excited. If they see that you're excited, they'll want to do the behavior over and over again. Be sure they know exactly what you loved about the result. If they know that, they can repeat it.

The PRAISE script, and it's an acronym. The way you say is when you want, when somebody does something good, you will praise them. You can give an example. I use this one a lot when I do this. We could say that let's say, "Jeremy, you ... I just ..." I would say, "Jeremy, do you have a moment." You say, "Yes." "Jeremy, I just got a call from accounting. Apparently you sent our budget requirements on this really nice Excel spreadsheet and they told me how awesome that was. Where did you learn how to do that?" Then you might say, "Well, I took a class and this and this." Then the fourth piece is identify ways they can get better. Be careful with this one. But you could say, "Jeremy, would you be willing to share that spreadsheet with some of the other departments? I would do it, but I want to make sure you get the credit." Then say, "Jeremy, you've done a great job. You're one of my best people." Then the E is ensure you've documented that, so when it comes time for review you don't have to try to remember. You've got it clearly documented.

Don't skip the steps. You can go step by step. The identify wa