Helping Them Achieve Results

I remember seeing a Marriott commercial a while back that closed by saying something along the lines of “we treat our guests like we’d want to be treated.” Ties right in with what nearly all of us know as The Golden Rule, huh? Around that same time, a friend of mine had shared something he experienced while on vacation with his family. For one reason or another, the hotel they were staying at for an entire week had made a mistake with their reservation, booking them in one room for the first half of the week and a different room for the second half of the week. Since it was peak season and the place had no other vacancies, there was no way to keep them in the same room all week long.

At check-in however, the staff member assured my friend that the hotel staff would handle the move from room to room for them in order to minimize the disruption his family experienced. The staff member even told him that’s what they would appreciate if the same thing happened to them… My friend is a relatively private person so he politely declined the offer and assured the staff member that he’d take care of the move himself but did request that he could stay in the first room until the second was actually ready rather than checking out of one at 10a and being without a room until after 2p when the normal check-in time began. All seemed to be resolved…

When the day arrived for my friend to move all of his family’s stuff from one room to the other, he received a call from the front desk saying that they had scheduled someone to take care of it for him so he could enjoy the time with his family. Again, he declined. He packed up all of their things and loaded it onto one of those carts that are impossible to steer and proceeded to do some work from his laptop in the room while the rest of the family went down to the beach. While waiting for the call that the other room was ready, he got a text from his wife asking him to bring her something she had forgotten. Since he could see her from the room and it would only take a few minutes, he did. When he got back, the cart with all of his things was gone. Someone from the hotel staff got to the room while he was out and took everything to the new room!

Although the hotel staff members were trying to serve him like they’d want to be served, my friend was extremely frustrated (this is the G-Rated version of the story). He valued privacy and they had violated that even after he had expressed that to them multiple times!

In The Servant, James Hunter suggests that “Leaders should identify the NEEDS of their people in order to serve them.” When the needs that my friend expressed were ignored, even though it wasn’t likely intentional, he felt anything but served! And let’s be honest, we just can’t serve everyone on our teams the same way or we’ll end up violating some of them at times too… This is where we should consider applying The Platinum Rule so we can serve them based on THEIR needs rather than our own needs!

As we consider the most effective way we can serve our team members with the first of the four primary behavioral styles, the ones who are Fast-Paced and Task-Focused, we’d do well to look at how we can invest our energy into helping them achieve results. While this DRIVEN group only represents about one out of every ten people we interact with, the sheer amount of activity we see from them can trick us into thinking there’s more of them than there really is. If we attempt to jump in and take over, they will likely be offended because they value having some level of control. They won’t need much praise either, unless it’s directed at how hard they’re working or how much they’ve accomplished to that point. If we want to provide servant leadership to this group of DOERS, all we really need to do is make sure we’re providing them with the resources they need, setting the right expectations for what the end result needs to be, and then allowing them to maintain as much control as we can.

All that said, serving the next primary behavioral style will look quite a bit different...

Here’s the thing: I’m in the small minority of the population that actually enjoys working! Accomplishing things and checking tasks off my list fills my tank. And praise God everyone you deal with isn’t like me, right! (For many reasons…) Seriously though, acting as a servant leader to someone like me is often fairly simple. Just tell me what needs to be done, give me some autonomy to take action, and provide me with some guidance from time to time to keep me between the ditches. I’d like to think of that as being relatively low maintenance but it really depends on who you ask!

The folks with the next primary behavioral style we’ll look at, however, will likely perceive that same treatment as anything but being served… This group represents around 30% of society as a whole but that can certainly vary depending on the organization or the work that’s being done. While they’re usually just as Fast-Paced in their approach to life as the DRIVEN group, they’re far more focused on the People involved than the task that needs to be accomplished. One of the things that energizes them the most is making sure everyone around them is having the best time possible while they’re working on whatever needs done. They truly enjoy bringing excitement to everything they're involved in!

With that in mind, being an effective servant leader will look completely different to someone with this primary behavioral style than someone with the last one we looked at. When we recognize that someone is wired this way, we should understand that they have different needs and they won’t view service the same way. As leaders, it’s still our responsibility to make sure the tasks get done but we’d do well to build as much fun as we possibly can into the process and allow them to have some laughs along the way. Again, just pushing for results won’t serve these folks. It will seem more like punishment!

This Inspiring bunch will feel like their needs have been met and we’ve provided them with great servant leadership when we’ve done all we can to celebrate them throughout the process of accomplishing whatever needed to be done. That said, the folks with the next primary behavioral style we’ll look at have a similar focus on people but are much more reserved in their approach so they’ll appreciate us serving them in a very different way than we’ve considered so far...

Make Sure Our Help Really Helps...

As we’ve discussed leading up to this point, becoming an effective servant leader certainly involves exemplifying several specific characteristics but even those can be interpreted quite differently depending on the behavioral and communication style of the individual we’re attempting to serve! And whether we always like it or not, their perception is nearly always their reality!

Several years ago, not long before I really started digging into The Model of Human Behavior, I was working in a human resources role where part of my responsibility was ensuring that our team members were consistently held accountable for performing their required tasks. As I got to know each individual and learned more about their roles, I noticed some gaps in one particular department. There was more indirect labor (non-billable hours) per person in that department than any other and the quality issues seemed to be a bit higher than we were seeing in the other areas.

The supervisor of that department was (and still is) an outstanding guy! He had been offered the role several years prior because of his performance in the department, but to the best of my knowledge, he hadn’t been given any formal supervisory or management training. He was great in every technical aspect of the role and the people on the receiving end of any work he performed absolutely loved him. His team members were typically happy working for him too.

Now if you’ve ever heard me talk about employee engagement, you’ve likely heard me say a happy employee isn’t necessarily an engaged or productive employee but an engaged employee is a productive and almost always happy employee. That was exactly what I saw in this department. To me, it seemed like a few of the team members were walking all over the supervisor. And with what I learned soon after that was my highly DRIVEN approach to achieve results, I saw it as my responsibility to help him correct this! There was just one problem…

That supervisor was a relatively quiet guy and was very good at the intricate details of his work. He cared a lot for each person in his department. But my DIRECT approach to addressing the issues was something he viewed as confrontation. Based on what I’ve learned since, his primary behavioral style was extremely SUPPORTIVE; he was very Reserved and focused on ensuring that the People around him were taken care of.

My intent was to serve him and the organization as a whole by helping address the issues we had uncovered. My charge-hell-with-a-water-pistol approach to providing him with that service was perceived much differently than I had hoped…

I’ll spare you the rest of the story, but the lesson I learned there was that I just cannot treat everyone like I’d like to be treated and still be viewed as a servant leader. If we hope to provide effective servant leadership to this third primary behavioral style, which just happens to be the largest of the four at around 35% of the population, we’d do well to tone down our approach and make sure we’re showing sincere appreciation for them as well as the people they care about. If we need to address an issue, we need to be very intentional about isolating the specific issue and not devaluing any particular individual, and we need to be sure we’re doing it in a very private setting.

I hadn’t not taken that approach and I realized later on that my push to get results had actually alienated that supervisor, even though my goal was to help him. When we’re working to serve folks with this primary style, we need to slow down enough to make sure our help really helps…

Having looked at three-quarters of folks we’ll likely deal with on any given day, we have one more primary style to consider when we’re working to provide effective servant leadership. Serving that style will require us to focus more on attention to detail...

Specific Details and Time to Complete the Task

Having looked ways we can truly serve the needs of our team members with each of the first three behavioral styles - DRIVEN, INSPIRING, and SUPPORTIVE - to this point, let’s close the loop with the final 25% of the population; the ones who tend to be Reserved and Task-Oriented. Please understand that none of these styles should be viewed as better than the others based on the order I’ve covered them in. This group certainly shouldn’t be considered as being in last place! In fact, some of the smartest people we know are likely to have this primary style… These are the CRITICAL thinkers and they’re nearly always very CONSCIENTIOUS about the results they produce.

I was in a client’s office several years ago, getting ready to provide a part of their team with an introductory lesson on The Model of Human Behavior, when one of the management team members had a fairly intense conversation (read: loud argument) with one of the key team members. Since this occurred just before the two of them sat down in the session I was providing for the group, the tension was still lingering through most of what I covered. In that particular session, I was also able to help each participant complete a DISC assessment showing their complete behavioral style blend and I was able to show them how to compare their results with the results of each other person in the room by running an Interaction Guide. If only the two of them in question had access to the information that tool offered a few hours earlier, that intense conversation may have gone a little smoother…

The management team member actually asked me to stick around after the session to chat with him one on one about how he could use the Interaction Guide to make sure his future conversations with that other team member were less fiery. I share that example with you here because it ties directly to what the folks with this final primary behavioral style need from us if we want to provide them with effective servant leadership.

Since this group places so much value on precision, and they’re very CAUTIOUS in their approach when they have unanswered questions, they look to their leaders for clear expectations and specific details as to how the task should be completed. With a more CALCULATING approach, they may not race out of the gate as quickly as the Faster-Paced styles but you can be sure they’ll stick with a project until it’s complete. Empowering these CONCISE folks is often as simple as providing them with the specific resources they’ll need and an adequate amount of time. Their drive to finish what they start will take care of the rest!

While those of us who are more DRIVEN have a bigger need for speed, this group is more interested in accuracy. Where our INSPIRING friends appreciate as much excitement as we can build into the work being done, these team members would prefer to quietly focus on the task at hand. And when the other Reserved group will tend to be more SUPPORTIVE and caring, this group may come across as being COLD when their mind is working through each step of the process.

Here’s one final thing to consider: none of us have just one of these styles. While we do each have one that’s our primary style, we’re all a unique blend of all four. As we begin to recognize the primary style of the team members we’re working to serve, we will also be able to notice some of the other traits to one degree or another. If we’re willing to focus on what matters most to them - how we can best meet their needs - each of the things we’ve worked through here should fall into place. Then we can begin working to instill the servant leadership approach into the rest of our teams!