Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

We all like to think we are special. Have you noticed that? This longing to feel special is greatest among those of us who are below average. A good many misguided leaders miss this point entirely. They think that the way to motivate others is to never be satisfied, to always be critical and demanding.

1. Make the goals easy at first. Here’s an uncomfortable truth. Success, even when it’s meaningless, feels good. People actually rejoice when their teams win. They may not have had a thing to do with it. Success energizes, motivates and feeds on itself.

2. Celebrate incremental improvement. Progress matters. Make a big deal out of it. People need emotional fuel to keep going. They want feel that they are at least making some headway.

3. Take small steps. People who don’t make some progress tire quickly, become discouraged and give up. They convince themselves and others that the goal didn’t really matter that much anyway.

4. Preach patience and practice what you preach. Variation happens. Significant change usually takes a long time. While genuinely celebrating incremental progress, repeatedly clarify the difference between movement and the goal line.

5. Do not celebrate failure. Feel-good leaders often mistakenly conclude that feeling good is the goal. Nope. Results are the things that matter.

How do you make people feel special?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

One of the evidence-based ways to achieve the results you want is to design and deploy a process that produces those results. But once we adapt to a certain process, we keep following it even if it no longer works—or never did. People don’t like change. It’s true that change occurs naturally, but the pace of natural change is glacial. Successful competitors rarely wait for change to occur naturally.

1. Focus relentlessly on results. The best case you can make that a process must be improved is the fact that it is not producing the desired results.

2. Identify a small group of passionate process owners. If you expect everyone in the group to leap at the opportunity to improve key organizational processes, you have lost your grip on reality. Only a small number of people care enough to make the necessary changes. Find them. Feed them. Empower them.

3. Make the case for change. If you just announce that the process has changed and everyone will just have to deal with it, a fair number of your colleagues will sabotage your recommended changes on principle. Explain yourself.

4. Force compliance. When you’ve accomplished as much as you can with effective persuasion, employ brute force to make the change stick. Audit the players’ compliance. Post their individual results publicly. Public embarrassment works. Attach unpleasant consequences to the failure to comply.

How to you achieve process improvement in your work environment?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

This is hard to do. It’s even harder to do well. You have the nice leaders who want everyone to be happy and love them. They just can’t bring themselves to confront their colleagues because that would hurt their feelings. They hint and beat around the bush. They avoid unpleasantness by talking about some other problem.

Then there are the jerks. They yell at underlings and berate people publicly for not doing what they want them to do the way they want them to do it. They confront not to produce results but to distract others from their own shortcomings or to throw their weight around.

Effective confronters avoid these two paralyzing extremes. Here’s how you can do it:

1. First, calm yourself. If you confront others when you are angry or frustrated, your emotion will drown out your message. You want to create an energizing discomfort that motivates, not discourages.

2. Ask reasonable but pointed clarifying questions. Ask permission to speak frankly and emphasize that you do not wish to be hurtful. Get right to the point. After you’ve asked the right question, stop and wait for the answer. Resist your natural inclination to fill uncomfortable silences with rambling explanations about why you hate to have to ask what needs to be asked.

3. Ask whether you’ve been clear. Ask whether you are making sense. Ask whether the questions you are asking are reasonable. Then wait for the confirmation that you have indeed been clear.

4. Ask whether you’ve provided the support they need. The reality is that people often need muscle to get things done in bureaucracies. If you can’t or won’t block for your runners, you cannot expect them to advance the ball.

5. Extract a new commitment. Refuse to leave the discomfort zone until you have a renewed commitment to achieve the results that you have both agreed make sense.

How do you effectively confront poor performance in your organization?

Kendall L. Stewart, M.D.

It is easy to write an action plan. You’ve dashed off hundreds of them. They sound good. After you’ve read a few, they all start to sound alike. They are well intentioned. They sound like they would work. Once you’ve written it, you can check this box knowing it is unlikely that you or anyone else will ever look at it again.

Creating a customized, innovative action plan is a lot harder. You have to think. Instead of writing down the things you feel like doing, consider what you would do if you were willing to do whatever it took. Forget about the barriers you face for a moment. Suppose you could get everyone’s full cooperation. What would you do then? When brainstorming about what might work, don’t hesitate to consider the most ridiculous options.

1. Specify exactly what you are going to do. Begin by explaining what you have already done. Use short, simple sentences. Focus on behavior instead of intention.

2. Explain how you are going to do it. Break it down into the simplest possible steps.

3. Identify who will do it. When it comes to persuading key stakeholders and opinion leaders, the people who are most effective are those with the best personal relationships with those opinion leaders. These powerful persuaders may be low ranking employees or informal leaders who are not even on your team.

4. Say when you will do it. Ask the responsible leaders whether the timeframes are reasonable. Obtain their commitments that they will execute the plans by that time.

5. Check to make sure it was done. The only action plans that matter are the ones that are executed. We all know how rare real execution it. Go over the task list at every meeting. Check off the tasks you have completed. Ask about the progress others are making. Offer your help while making it clear that you will not stop checking on them until their work is done.

6. Monitor results. The most elegant action plans—even when fully deployed—are worthless if they don’t produce improved results.

How do you encourage the development of action plans that actually work?