There are three primary areas where managers should focus their attention in order to impact how well the people in their units are working together. Many problems and issues that are found in the workplace can be attributed to one or more of these realms. Good supervision and oversight requires continually noticing what’s going on in each realm in order to make timely adjustments and changes when and where necessary.

The first is the technical realm which involves whether or not employees “can do” their jobs at the level required. Does each worker have the skills or competence necessary so that they can do their job? Would they benefit from additional training, direction or other developmental assistance?

The second area of importance is the realm of “will do”. Does each worker have the necessary motivation and attitude so that they will do their job and be a positive contributor? Are there obstacles in their way that are preventing them from being fully committed while they are at work such as personal issues, problems with co-workers, fear of change, coping with shrinking resources, or frustration with the current work process?

The root of all workplace problems does not always stem from employee issues directly. These people problems can sometimes be symptomatic, with the underlying cause traced to the third “how do” realm. The “how do” realm is defined by the business processes along with the reporting structure. Is the work organized so that people can work smart? Are all of the tasks necessary? Do the policies and procedures in place still make sense? Are more policies and procedures necessary to help achieve more consistent outcomes? Involving employees in examining work flow design and in making the right changes may result in helping individual workers better use their strengths and abilities. This can support increased motivation and commitment to the work as well as to customers and co-workers.

Keep in mind that workplace problems, like most problems we encounter, are often interrelated with no clear indication of where they originated. The best solutions can be in finding ways to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. This is particularly true when making the most important decisions a manager makes – who they should hire.

The hiring process is the time to determine the level of importance to be placed on the “can do” vs. the “will do” realms. Traditionally, employee selection practices have placed an over emphasis on technical experience and not enough on screening for interpersonal characteristics, motivation, and positive attitude. Yet the most common and difficult employee relations problems typically involve misconduct or misbehavior and not lack of job knowledge and skill. No one wants to hire an incompetent worker. However, is it easier to train an employee to do a particular job task or is it easier to train them how to take initiative and be flexible?

Good managers support their employees by paying attention and asking good questions. By understanding the interconnection between these realms, managers can develop and apply more targeted, timely and effective solutions in response. Step one is hiring the right people, for the right jobs, at the outset. When this happens managers also benefit as units and teams develop faster and are able to solve many of their own problems. This allows for more time to spend addressing the strategic issues that frequently get neglected.

I found some interesting concepts regarding change and the role of coaching in a book by Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee called, The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results, London: Little Brown. Their research suggests that personal change occurs more effectively and sustainably when we are focused on a Positive Emotional Attractor (PEA), rather than a Negative Emotional Attractor (NEA). Focusing on a PEA means building on our strengths which allows us to be more open to possibilities. Often we choose, or are led down, the path toward an NEA that pushes us to fix what’s wrong with us. By following that negative route we usually get “turned off” soon after we begin and positive change rarely occurs.

Typically, if we start on what we want to “fix” first, our fight or flight response is triggered and that leads us to behave defensively, or we quickly find excuses to avoid the effort. We get uncomfortable and we are less open to feedback, and soon lose commitment to making the change. Coaches can help the personal change process by helping to identify the positive reasons for making the change and building on personal strengths in order to achieve some small wins. Once those small wins are achieved, motivation can build, along with a desire to then address weaknesses.

Good leaders are good coaches. They create trust, not fear, and help those they lead find positive, personal reasons to move toward change. This approach is much more effective, particularly as an early change strategy, than demanding quick fixes to personal weaknesses. However, it also takes time and patience to achieve real results. The process starts with a leader’s recognizing and understanding the level of readiness of the individual being coached. By starting where they need and want to begin, the coaching effort can be much more productive for both parties.

For all of the potential benefits to good coaching, there can be an unforeseen challenge to incorporating it as a management practice in the workplace. That is, everyone may not view coaching as a positive. I was reminded of this recently while working with a client and discussing the topic of performance management and the supportive role of coaching. I asked about the word “coaching” and how it was viewed in their organization and I was told that the word has a negative connotation for some because it is associated with problem performance. We are shaped by our experience.

The idea of being coached can be viewed as a positive or negative based on influential experiences, some beginning at an early age. A close family member had a high school sports coach who would pull each and every player out of the game right after they made a mistake. They were then derided and made to sit on the bench and reflect on what they did wrong. Conversely, when they did something right, it was ignored and taken for granted by the coach. Consequently, whatever growth and improvement occurred for the various team members happened very slowly, if at all, because the level of fear and lack of trust that existed kept morale and motivation low. I can’t help but wonder how those individual players will view and respond to coaching by their managers when they eventually enter the workforce.

Leaders, even with positive intentions, may want to accept the fact that viewpoints can differ regarding coaching. The potential impact of the language and labels leaders use and take for granted, may not always be understood. Even a helpful word (to me) like “coaching” may trigger a negative response even before it begins.

As our world, and especially our workplaces, become increasingly automated it’s important to remember that people don’t operate like bits and bytes. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are being trained and conditioned by the speed and capabilities of the technology around us. This includes the technology we control and the technology that controls us. Some of us spend more time actually interacting with a keyboard and an LCD than we do with a flesh and blood human being. An unintended consequence is that our expectations about how people should “operate” can be affected as we become programmed by the performance we get from our laptops or cell phones.

With a few exceptions, technology usually works as advertised. When it doesn’t, it might require an upgrade or replacement. We learn, often through trial and error, what keys to press and what commands to give to get the results we want. Each time I sit in front of my laptop and click the Word icon, it loads and I can create a document the same way I did yesterday or last week. Once I learn how to operate the “program” it may not work as intuitively as I would like, but it does respond consistently. There can be a downside. How often do interpersonal problems occur because we unconsciously expect that our co-worker, our boss, a friend, or family member will respond as consistently as the technology we use? When they don’t, we devalue them.

People are “buggy” software. Dealing with them is often unpredictable and even messy. One day they are in a positive mood, another day they are not. One hour they are incredibly productive, the next they are staring out the window. As skilled as some of us may be in operating and even programming our computers and cell phones, we ourselves are buggy. We have moods, with different abilities to communicate that other people have to respond and adapt to.

The lesson for leaders is to remember that managing people is not the same as managing an Outlook calendar. A lot more patience and flexibility is required to prevent constant frustration that will spill over to people around them. This frustration can contribute to dysfunction in the workplace. I am not suggesting that standards be lowered. I am suggesting that we recognize the benefits of each of the resources we work with, particularly the human variety. Focus on how to maximize all resources, as well as accept their limitations. Let’s remember that even when people meander, a big advantage they can have over technology is their problem solving ability, judgment and creativity. When people feel valued they can apply those abilities and deal with ambiguity, particularly during challenging and uncertain times like these. Computers can’t. At least not yet.

I received a degree from UC Berkeley in Social Science and I believe I benefited greatly from a well-rounded, liberal arts course of study. I learned a lot of theories about people and how we behave. I’m sure that I internalized many of those lessons and have applied them in my personal and professional life. However, I believe that the most useful early education I received was while working in the restaurant business as a host, waiter and especially as a bartender.

As a student, I learned a lot about myself, and about people, while working in a busy basement bar on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. With live music blaring, cocktail waitresses lined up with armloads of drink orders, friendly and aggressive customers leaning over the bar demanding a drink or conversation, and a hovering manager in the wings, there were lots of lessons learned. In time I found that this practical education outweighed my formal education up the street. I could see ways in which people were similar and different. I learned how important it was to stay organized and focused on what I was doing and what needed to be done next. I learned that it was always important to treat customers like individuals whenever you are dealing with them, however brief. I also learned from observing my co-workers that if you don’t really like people at a core level, working with them is not going to really change things.

It is easy to see that the hospitality business is openly about creating a positive experience for the customer and a positive association for the establishment. Isn’t that what we should be trying to do in most every business, including government service?

As the economy continues to improve there will be increased competition for smart, talented workers who are enthusiastic and positive, can handle stress, can organize their time and workload, can remember details, can work well with co-workers, can communicate clearly and are able to consistently treat customers so that they feel valued. Aren’t these the skills and qualities of a really good food server or bartender? Aren’t these also the skills and qualities you would like many of your employees to have?

Sometimes when we hire we get too conservative in our thinking and approach. We can get caught up in the “similar-to-me” effect and favor candidates that remind us of ourselves. Or we place a rigid emphasis on the completion of a specific degree, and make it a requirement to have actually performed the exact work, etc. Next time you review a resume or actively recruit new talent, particularly at the entry levels, be open and creative in how you consider and evaluate the relevancy of previous experience and transferable skills. Some innate skills and qualities are actually more critical to an employee’s success than the technical skills you can provide them through training. Pay attention and you may discover that you have an excellent candidate serving you lunch today.

Next week is my birthday. And as the day approaches I recall that an advisor recently told me that my life is likely half over. Since I’ll be 51, I am OK with that prospect.

There remains a lot to look forward to in the future. I’m still planning new business ventures, meeting new friends, planning and creating memories with my family and most of all continuing to learn. For me the learning is not just focused on acquiring professional knowledge. That never ends. There is always some new approach or concept about people and how we behave to read about, or some new situation or challenge in the workplace that catches my attention. However, some of the most universal learning for me comes from developing my skills in sailing and music, two pursuits that bring me a lot of joy and pleasure, along with pain sometimes.

As I am still rehabbing my “sailing elbow”, I’ll offer more thoughts about the impact of sailing in a future post. Focusing on music, I have always been a big fan of rock drums and have followed various drummers throughout their careers since my early teens. John Bonham and Steve Gadd were a couple of my icons, Regrettably, although I saw Gadd a few times, I never got to see Zeppelin play live. At rock concerts, I was one of those few in the crowd to jump up and applaud after a killer drum solo.

I learned a lesson when I was persuaded by a friend to take up playing the drums 2 ½ years ago. We were at a break at a Steely Dan concert talking about music and I was lamenting that I had never learned to play drums, even though I have been a huge fan of the instrument. His message was simple, “why not start now?” So I did. He plays bass guitar and as it turns out, he started playing bass around the middle of his life as well. A few drum lessons were followed by practice sessions in my garage, where we have since added some other players and now can proudly call ourselves a garage band.

Here’s the kicker, so to speak. The real lesson was that learning something new and fun remains a humbling experience. My ego is continually challenged when I can’t play a beat or a drum fill in the way I hear it on the recording. I had to accept the fact that I was incompetent and that I would fail a lot – until I didn’t. For a while it would have been easier to stop. I am improving (so my band mates tell me). Still, learning is not easy, despite the rewards. Professionally I am continually working to persuade people to learn new skills and develop new habits, and my journey to learn to play drums is a useful reminder of how demanding learning can be, especially for adults.

My bass player friend that inspired me to learn got me tapped into the joy and benefits I could receive by investing the practice time and applying real effort. Most importantly he was patient and realized that I had to start when I was ready and at my level of ability. Despite the perceived benefits, an attractive goal or objective can best be reached when we are willing to accept that fact that quick successes are not always realistic when the desired change is significant. As each of us marches (or plays) to our own drummer, if we can be patient and keep our ego from getting in our way, we have a much better chance of leveraging the learning.