Recognize the Progress (Part 2)

In Recognize the Progress (Part 1) I stated, “As a leader, it is important to let people know specifically that you have seen their growth, or to remind them that growth has been made when they are becoming frustrated.” I focused in Part 1 on telling people you have seen their growth. In this post I will focus on the second part. 

Early on in my posts I discussed that organizations are often times very quick to move from one program to another, bring in a new shiny object without really recognizing what the current resource was providing them. There are times when a new resource is clearly a better option and the pivot should be made, but success is sequential. Growth takes time, and often mentioned in growth is the hockey stick model. The image below is from a Forbes article based off the work of Bobby Martin, author of The Hockey Stick Principles: The Four Key Stages to Entrepreneurial Success. This model was also famously used as part of the strong arguments for human impacted climate change during the mid-90's by Penn State research Michael Mann.

The beginning of any new idea is the tinkering phase, where some ideas are going to work, and some fall flat on their faces. A lot of this is the core value, goal, priority, and strategy discussions that have to happen in order to start the hard work of making the progress you have deemed necessary. Once started, not much will change. In fact, there usually is an implementation dip as people need to unlearn old habits, and work to make the new habits a part of who they are and what they do. This is the hardest part, when people want to quit or life gets in the way and we fall back into what we have always done to get by. People either silently go back to what they were doing and hope no one notices, or will own up and say they just can't see how the new idea is going to work. 

As a leader, that is when it is important to have your own collection of information gathering on the true nature of progress, and to have a handle on what the people working for you are doing. When the time comes for people to want to go back to the old ways, or jump onto something else new, it is important to focus on the facts. Acknowledge where people are at, make sure they are heard, listen for the feelings they have vs. the facts you have, and then lay out the facts. People will want to go back to their feelings, you need to be able to push back to point out the truth in how things are going. And it's ok to point out areas that still aren't growing, and new strategies can come out of these conversations. But working through this leads to an inflection point with everyone, and once that happens, that's when real change occurs. The leadership comes in the guidance through the "blade years" from the image above. It also means patience during this time, knowing that if your plan is good and you nurture this plan, the growth will happen. When it does, praise your people as they did the work to get to this point.