Living where I do, there comes a week every year
when the constant whirr of helicopters overhead, road closures and signs
outside all the local pubs offering their legendary pre-race breakfasts can
mean only one thing: the Cheltenham Festival, with its world-famous Gold Cup
race, has rolled into town once
more.
As I write, the
sky is full of helicopters ferrying jockeys and spectators to the racecourse.
Others are walking past my door, beautifully attired, excitedly chatting about
the day ahead.
And
suddenly, I was reminded of a conversation I had many years ago with a
professional horse racing
trainer.
What he said
was quite simple: “When I take a racehorse to a new track, after just 6 laps of
that track it knows exactly where it is going; that route is fixed in the
horse’s mind and it will follow that course without
question.”
I remember
thinking, “Wow! I wish it was that easy to get humans to head in the same
direction!” But then a thought occurred to me, “Yikes! What if they change the
layout of the
racecourse?”
So,
I asked him and he said: “Oh that’s easy! We just teach them the new layout,
the same way we taught them the
first.”
“Surely that
confuses the horses?” I asked. “No” he said, “They just know that this is the
new way to do it and stick to it.”
My initial reaction was to think
“Wow! Wouldn’t we all like a team that was that adaptive to changing their
behaviour?”, but it was pretty clear that, he was underplaying his role in this
process. He had years of experience, and you could see that this, along with
trust and rapport built up between him and the horses, played a big part in
this ‘simple’
process.
What
can we, as managers, learn from
this?
1. When we need
someone to improve or change their performance, we need to identify whether the
issue is down to a lack of skill, will or a combination of both. Our horse
trainer knew that when faced with a new track, it was the horse’s skill that
needed addressing and focused the training on this. Our study guide
Managing
Performances: Desire and Ability will will help you
identify where your issues
are.
2. To
encourage the employee, we need to know what motivates them and explain how
they will benefit from changing their approach. Why not spend some time
thinking about
What
Motivates My Team?
3.
Don’t shy away from
Difficult
Conversations; the problem won’t go away if you don’t
tackle it. Think about our horse trainer; what would happen if he took his
horse to a racecourse that the horse didn’t know and simply expected the horse
to get around in first
place?
4. Learn to give effective
feedback to your team members.
AID
is great tool to learn. When you are confident with your feedback skills, why
not show them
Why
Feedback
Matters.
5.
Give people clear objectives that you want them to achieve; make sure that they
are truly SMART. As
Sam’s
Tale demonstrates, it makes a massive difference to the
outcome when they
are.
6. Finally, keep
working with the team member until you know the behaviours are properly
embedded. Unfortunately, unlike horses, this will be more complex than running
around a racecourse 6 times. But your persistence in encouraging them,
supporting them, noticing the improvements and saying well done will have a
huge impact on the likelihood of success.
Have a great week!