Performance Talk:
The One-on-One Part of Leadership

Introduction -- A Note from the Author

When I started out in business, over thirty years ago, you didn't get any leadership training when you got promoted. Things aren't much better today. Here's how they stand.

The odds are pretty good that you got no training in your new, leadership job when you were promoted. In 2003, just 7 percent of company training budgets was devoted to those newly promoted to management.

The odds are pretty good that if you did get training, the training was mostly about policies, procedures and administrivia. According to the Wall Street Journal: "Much [first line] training goes to help managers comply with workplace rules on issues like sexual harassment, or to teach them financial basics such as budgeting."

The fact is that the most important part of your job is dealing with your subordinates. What you do is the most important factor driving both group productivity and worker satisfaction. And how you deal with your subordinates one-on-one is the most important part of what you do.

The odds are pretty good that if you got any training in your leadership role at all, a lot of it was useless and some of it was wrong. Consider one piece of common advice. When you sit down with a subordinate to talk about performance, you're told to "set them at ease with small-talk." There are at least two things wrong with that advice.

First, small-talk only sets some people at ease. It makes others nervous because they want to get right to the subject of the interview. You'll learn more about this in our chapter on social styles.

Second, sometimes you don't want to set people at ease. You want them to be uncomfortable so they understand the importance of the behavior you're going to discuss.

The odds are pretty good that if you did get training in leadership it was treated like a classroom subject—something you learn from a book or a class. Great leaders don't learn leadership that way.

Leadership is an apprentice trade. You learn leadership best from a combination of classroom work, books and other resources, role models, mentors, peers, self-critique and ongoing personal development. You learn leadership more from other people than you do from books or classes.

Very, very few companies provide anything close to real leadership training. There are exceptions, such as the programs offered at Caterpillar University's "Succeeding in Supervision" program, but they are few and far between.

The result is that you will probably have to take charge of your own learning and development in this crucial area. I wrote this book to help you. It's different from other books you've read, so let's talk about how to get the most out of it.

The core of the book is the story of Karen, a newly promoted manager, and how she learns about talking to the people who work for her about their performance. I chose the story form because that's how we human beings learn best. It's the closest you can come to having your own experience.

Read the story all the way through. It's long enough to convey a lot of information, but short enough that you can finish it in an evening or a plane ride. You'll learn things that will make you a better boss the easy way, without a lot of study or effort. But don't stop there.

Read the story again, pausing after each chapter to check out the Reminders and Resources section. There's a chapter in that section for every story chapter.

You'll find a list of key points from the chapter that you can use for review. In some chapters you'll find charts that cover critical concepts and make them easy to remember.

There's also a list of resources to help you in your life-long development of leadership skills. The lists were comprehensive and accurate when the book was written. You'll find updated versions of the lists on the Performance Talk web site at http://www.performancetalk.com/.

What you will read here comes from many sources. It comes from the books and ideas of others. It comes from my own experience as a corporate executive, US Marine, and as the owner and manager of several small businesses. It also comes from over twenty years of training others in the skills you'll learn here.

Through those years, hundreds of people have taken the time to suggest changes to the material, to point out new material and perspectives, and to give me feedback on how things worked. Every one of them has touched the material in this book and made it better.

But now, you want to get started and you're probably wondering if what's in this book will work for you. Let me answer that question with a short story.

Many years ago I was teaching a course in basic supervisory skills to a group of newly promoted police sergeants. When we broke for lunch on the first day, a tough older sergeant named John came up to me with a question. "This stuff sounds good," he said, "but I don't know if it will work for me."

I told him what I want to tell you now. There's no way to learn these skills except by trying them out. That's where you find out how they work for you. When you know that, please tell me.

I had neglected to notice that the sergeant was then working the graveyard shift. So I was surprised a couple of weeks later when my phone rang at around 3 AM. I picked up the phone to hear: "Bock, this is John. The stuff works."

Now it's your turn. Read the book. Then work at using the tools and developing your skills. Let me know how it works for you.