Dear Leaders, How well do you know your teams?

Years ago, when I was at Diageo, some of us from different parts of the world were pulled into a creative setting in Chicago to deal with a problem statement. At that point in time, we found that we were losing a significant number of high-potential employees – those the company had nurtured, moved across markets, and given higher roles, etc. And yet, they were either fired or left. So the Diageo exec asked the group of us in Chicago, What do we need to do to keep people?

It was -10 degrees Celsius and freezing outside in wintertime Chicago. But it was warm inside the creative space, where we were encouraged to work unconstrained on this problem statement. After much discussion, we zeroed in on the Diageo Values; these were - Passionate about our Consumers, Be the Best, Freedom to Succeed, Proud of What we Do. And what we realised was that these values, which served us very well, were all about the business. What was missing was the way we looked at our people and relationships. So we decided that we would add another value, which simply said Value Each Other.

Value Each Other – While the interpretation of this has undergone some tweaks over the years, the Diageo website now articulates this as “We value each other and build real relationships. We seek to leverage diverse people and perspectives. We trust and empower each other to win. We speak and challenge openly to grow people and the business.”

How do we put this into practice? At the Chicago workshop, we also recognised that people are really the Partners for Growth (we called it P4G). The key insight was that we don’t really spend enough time in understanding our people. And the critical piece was asking the question – Do line managers know their teams?   To create an enabling framework, we changed how we looked at our Performance appraisal form. The traditional way that most organisations do is to have a set of objectives against which people talk about what they have done and they are rated, using a Bell Curve.

We made one change – the very first question that we put into this form was – “ What are your personal aspirations? “This was an opportunity for the employee to speak about what their aspirtions were – and these were not just career ambitions, but life ambitions as well. Ultimately, work and careers must enable life.  And this led to quality line manager – team member discussions – enabling the line manager to know the team member well – what are the motivations, challenges, life situations that the employee was going through. This was very powerful.  It is interesting what such a conversation brought about – someone wanted to take a sabbatical and travel, someone wanted to have a baby, someone shared some personal financial challenges, etc etc.

Unlocking Empathy:   The above exercise is a great one, since it allows line managers to know their team members deeply, understand their personal context and ambitions, which relate directly to the way employees perform and contribute.  And such deep connections lead to Empathy.  Every employee then matters, and the role of organisations and leaders is to enable the employees to achieve their aspirations.

Use a High Possibility Lens:  This strongly allows leaders to look at each member of the team and their development from a High Possibilities Lens,  rather than a high potential lens. The problem with a High Potential lens is that it touches a very small fraction of the employee base. A High Possibility lens allows you to look at the potential of each employee, without exception.

Having a vision for each employee:   This allows leaders to look at and develop a vision for each employee. What can we do with the employee, and how can we enable them? It recognises that each one may not become the CEO or CXO, but enables leaders to think about how to maximise the potential of the team members.  This can lead to constructive discussions on the key strengths and areas of improvement, enabling greater focus on strengths and enabling discussions on upskilling. It can allow leaders to take risks with their team members for new roles.

For line managers and team members, this approach allows greater meaning and purpose, self-esteem, builds loyalty and helps drive greater performance as well.

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