When it comes to getting performance results, one way to do it is to tell your employees what to do. This approach can be a lottery – sometimes they do it, and sometimes they don’t. Why is that?
Neuroscience is discovering the human brain can be like a two year old, tell it what to do and it automatically pushes back. The reason for this is we all have unique ways of thinking about things, this is because of the unique pathways we have developed in our brain. Our brain has over 100 billion neurons. Each neuron has the possibility of connecting with 10,000 adjoining neurons. This means there are many different ways we can connect the neural pathways in our brain, creating our own unique way of thinking.
If someone tells us something that does not match our thinking (neural pathways) we discard it. Meaning if you tell an employee to do something, it can be a lottery as whether you’ll get the right performance results. You may end up micro managing them instead, and ultimately carrying the responsibility for getting the performance results.
Great Performance results, how do you get them?
Use a more coaching leadership style and help employee’s build on the thinking (neural pathways) they already have. The human brain loves questions and working out how to best do something. The best way to get performance results is to ask questions.
Start with open questions, let you employee decide where they would like to start to focus:
- What is important for us to focus on first?
- What is your thinking on this?
- Can you see any gaps in your thinking?
- How can I best help you here?
- What is your plan for achieving your targets?
- What outcome is important to you?
Then probe at least three times to get to the heart of the matter:
- Can you tell me more about……?
- Is there anything else?
- Anything else?
Use closed questions to call people to action:
- Would you like to set an action in this area?
- When can you complete this by?
- Could you complete this by……?
- Is this something you could commit to?
Go on, ask a question. It can be surprising what you learn from your employee, about HOW to get the performance results.