Performance-Leadership Wall

I don’t really know what the title should be. The idea I am saying is that there is this seeming wall between excellent (i.e., commendable) performance and transition to leadership.

As I mentioned previously, leadership requires different competencies from technical expertise resulting in excellent performance. It must be pointed out, if it is not so obvious, that leadership is performance in itself, and should also be assessed if it is excellent, satisfactory, or below par. Technical expertise will not result in competent leadership.

I am writing this post because my supervisor and I had a heart to heart talk on leadership, as I expressed my difficulty in my role as a supervisor. At the end of our conversation, I was thinking that I was not convinced that I should stay as supervisor.

Our talk began with me sharing to her that I don’t want to be a supervisor. I lost my value added position then that was being able to have a fresh eyes on things that we are doing, and my ability to add value to planning and monitoring work with my competency in information management. I also surfaced the idea that supervising people, which is the key responsibility of being a supervisor, was difficult given my continued role as a technical specialist. Furthermore, all these people’s outputs are contributions to a deliverable of the division.

I concluded that I need a supervisor for myself, and I am more effective as a specialist rather than as a supervisor. I am willing to lose the RATA.

My supervisor’s talk shared that she also experienced a similar stage earlier in her career. To my understanding (i.e., she did not say it this way), she liked doing something more simple and straightforward rather than endure the conflicting perspectives of management that we somehow have to reconcile.

She said other things, but for now, I think the key idea that made me think two days later was that performers seem go through a performance wall transitioning into leadership role.

In running, particularly in marathons and ultramarathons, runners experience “hitting the wall.” This figurative wall is that point of the run when the previously challenging distance becomes impossible. Patrick McCrann describes it pretty well (for me, that is):

"The wall" is defined as that period in a marathon when things transition from being pretty hard to being really, really hard. It is the point where your body and mind are simultaneously tested. It's the perfect intersection of fatigue and diminished mental faculties. Or as you most likely remember it, it's the exact point where all your pre-race plans went out the window. (Source: http://www.active.com/running/articles/how-to-beat-the-wall-during-your-marathon)

If you read my other blogs, you would know that I like joining marathons. Obviously, I join for fitness and not for the race. For this reason, I frequently compare work performance with running (as running is performance in itself).

My problem is when my supervisor role gets in the way of my own performance.

After a brief (but very belatedly, if I may say) assessment of my situation, I “learned” that I have two roles:

1) Technical specialist
2) Supervisor

Someone seems to think that by adding compensation, technical specialists would magically acquire the needed leadership and supervisory competencies needed to effect their respective team’s outputs. Furthermore, it seems that the agency or management is not cognizant of the reality that supervising people takes 100 percent of a supervisor’s time. If this is not so, either the deliverable suffers, or the supervision suffers.

So for people who craft outputs and supervise at the same time, adding P10,000 monthly to a person’s compensation will not make that person an effective supervisor. In case it is not clear, neither is it sufficient.

Going back to the “wall,” I guess I am at that point of my career when I see the wall before me. However, I must step back and think: Is this a wall in one race (transitioning from specialist to supervisor is natural step) or this is the end and I must transfer to another (I have to prepare differently as this is another race, similar to changing from road marathons to trail runs).

And so, I have to really assess this, give it serious time to think about how to go about it.

For me, I see leadership as a tool to effect organizational outcomes, similar to technical expertise. The two go together, and I don’t believe that one is more important than the other. Organizations need both technical experts who do the job and leaders who prioritize what needs to be done depending on the situation.

I probably said this before, already. Leaders, just like any other workers, need to be prepared. Not investing in them will cost the organization more in the immediate and long term.

Note: This post may be updated and refined in the future.

Challenges of a new supervisor

So it’s been like three months in this supervisory position, and I am not enjoying it.

The challenging responsibilities of a supervisor, for me, are addressing performance gaps, delegating appropriately, motivating, balancing management perspective with technical and people concerns, among others. I will just see if there are others.

As much as all supervisors want everyone on their team to be competent for the jobs they are supposed to do, this is not always the case. Competency gaps or misalignment may have been the result of problematic hiring process, age, reorganization, or other reasons. Whatever reasons these may be, and usually these are beyond the supervisor’s control, it is still the supervisor’s responsibility to deliver results.

Trained as I was in classical military training methodologies, my default corrective mechanism is the “sandwich method.” This is done by the supervisor providing instruction on how to address the performance gap, followed by a punishment (usually a physical activity), then the supervisor repeats the lesson on how to do the task correctly.

Of course, this is addressing a performance gap, which is addressing an immediate concern. The deeper concern is the competency gap, which is an altogether different matter.

Although the two may have a common root cause, like motivation.

Performance gaps and competency gaps can be addressed as these can be corrected. However, if the reason is motivation, addressing this is not as straightforward as either of the two.

As listed above, motivation is another difficult of being a supervisor. There are a number of theories on motivation, and identifying which approach to use for every employee’s unique situation is a challenge. Now how about if it is the supervisor that needs motivation, on staying or on delivering according to standards.

Another challenge is on delegating. I read in an HBR article that people who cannot delegate may have some behavioral issues (I will post the link here in the near future), such as trust or conceit. If I have difficulty delegating but I cannot identify which of those two is the reason, are there other possible reasons?

Another challenge of being a supervisor is balancing how to address management prerogative vis-à-vis technical and people concerns.

Depending on the company or organization, supervisors usually are promoted from people who have demonstrated above-average skills and competencies in the skills they are hired for. As such, they have been proven themselves in doing their main work as specialists with wide and deep appreciation of their work and the work’s immediate context.

When they are promoted to supervise people, they are given a new role (note that I used “new” instead of “higher” role), frequently without adequate training. Management hopes that the learned higher technical competency would translate to ability to deliver on broader responsibilities, not considering that broader responsibility usually involves managing people, which was not a key requirement in the specialist role. Thus, high technical competency will be used to address a leadership competency requirement. Unfortunately, in my experience, this can lead to frustration to the new leaders as they are used to delivering results [on their own] while seeing team results, which they see as a reflection of their performance as supervisors, below their self-determined levels.

Also, I question myself: For a limited financial compensation for being responsible for deliverables, is it worth it?

Yes, I am stepping into the realm of extrinsic motivators. Honestly, I do not love being designated a formal supervisor. I would rather be a person recognized for my skills, including relating with people, coaching and mentoring them to help them deliver and provide them with adequate resources and work environment. I realize that all these things can be done with being a formal supervisor, but perhaps the organizational reality that makes this difficult is that one has to do all these things in the context of an organizational environment that has a conflict of philosophy on leadership, responsibility, and abused culture of completed staff work.

I understand that I may be being too hard on myself… I should allow myself some learning curve, and maybe I am just experiencing these difficulties because I am learning… but am I? I am just thinking of what the organization requires of my team…. And that organization does not care about learning and think about learning curve for those below them (in general, I mean).

I miss my previous weekends studying new things that, well, yes, would be helpful for work, but they are really of different disciplines. I like playing the role of a second or third perspective on proposed ideas or activities. I miss learning how to lead people from the experience of others.

My life has become way busier compared with how it was when I was working in my previous employer. But becoming a supervisor changed it from overly loaded to overly vague and unclear, trying to guess what the bosses want without guidance or with conflicting instructions from multiple authorities.

Time to check my blood pressure now…

Introduction to Database and Database Management

I'm thinking of organizing a brief knowledge-sharing session about database next week. I hope to share what are the opportunities in having a "real database." Below my preliminary syllabus:

Learning Outcome: At the end of this 2-hour session, participants are expected to have a working knowledge and appreciation of database, and database design and management, to help them in efficient data collection, storage, reporting, and ultimately, decision-making.
                     
Among others, the session will allow the participant to answer the following questions and apply that knowledge to their own situation/requirements:

1. What is a database?
2. What are the uses of database (aside from getting stored data)?
3. How should we design databases (and why so)?
4. What are the available tools and techniques in processing data in a database?

During the session, participants will analyze available data forms or table reports to design a data collection tool that will allow the user use and “re-use” data.

Methods of Instruction: Guided discussion, paper form analysis, and tool application

Logistical Requirements:

• Projector and laptop with internet connection and spreadsheet application
• Sample report forms for analysis
• Participants may bring their own laptop for exercises

Session Participants: To maximize the learning experience, it is recommended that participants be limited to those who:

• Use database-like applications (Microsoft Excel) on a regular basis; or
• Use matrix reports from agencies that want to reuse data.

Session Size: Due to the interactive nature of this session, a maximum size of 10 is recommended.

Learning PHP and MySQL Fundamentals - Day 1

So I attended my first day of PHP MySQL short course training yesterday, It is an introductory course, with my intent to get as much practice on using PHP and complement my own study reading online sources.

Actually, I was not sure if I would like to enroll in the basics class, as I thought that based on the outline, I have covered 80% of the content. Anther reason was I got confused with the price posted in the website. It says that the regular training fee is P16,000, while Early Bird Government participants pay P8,000. While I am a government employee, I was only registering (i.e., paying) on the first day of the training, definitely not an "early bird," which the website defined as a participant who has to pay the full registration fee two weeks before the start of the class.

I am glad the staff said that I can avail the P8,000 (subject to presentation of relevant documents, which I promptly presented). And I am glad I still did enroll in the basic class.

While a cursory reading of the outline tells me that I got 80% of the content based on my personal readings, the training did expose me to other practical challenges that I did not get from the two PHP-MySQL-Apache books I was reading.

The assignment (which I only got to research today) also helped me to keep the concepts in my mind. As a programming class, it also helped me appreciate how it can be applied in everyday life (although not the programming language, but rather the logic and process). One personally funny example the trainer gave about LOOP was "If anak ng presidente, derecho na. Kapag hindi, gawin mo ang mga procedures na ito."

At first, I felt defensive, considering where I work. But then, I had to ignore it. I am neither the President nor a child of one. And while I don't want to say it is true, it is an example that they may have found real in their experience.

But for me, the appreciation of where programming can be applied is helpful.

Looking forward to the next session, which will be after two weeks.

Re-learning to Write and Weakness as a Motivation to Improve

My application to this government agency concerned with national security, which included a one-on-one interview and a writing test, revealed how bad my communication skills were. I am writing here to publicly acknowledge that weakness, which I commit myself to improve at the soonest possible time.

Aside from telling the public (i.e., the limited number of people who read my blog) about my experience, I also got to experience what I preach: Going through an application process to assess yourself.

Many times, when we get performance reviews, we get very satisfactory ratings. Sometimes, the rating is correct, sometimes, the rating is there to allow you to stay. Or sometimes, the rating has no basis.

I am not a fan of external validation, but I do appreciate feedback, which you can only get from being externally connected. And that writing test (the result of which was not given to me) made me realize how bad my writing skills have become over the months I have been out of Policy.

The result was an expected pain. That day, I knew I was not prepared. However, the results of the writing surprised me so much. Again, there was no score, but it did make me realize how bad it is.

Again, no one told me my writing or interview skills were bad, but the opportunity made me realize it.

And I have to be honest with myself.

As painful as it is, I have to accept the truth that I am not ready to go back to technical communication roles.

I simply hope that my friends at Policy that old skills forgotten can be easily re-learned is true.

I have got some word to do.

Of course, I am not writing this just to share my experience of learning. I want to say, in brief, that that experience of realizing for one's self your weakness is a liberating experience, that an organization should also try.

If we do not admit our weakness (i.e., objectively telling ourselves that we failed in some areas), then we won't be urged to make drastic actions to rectify them.

If we continue to make "success" and "failure" subjective, we will always have success that is not something we can really be proud of.

If we continue to accommodate perspectives into performance and consider economy of the individual for making decisions performance issues, then don't expect improvement.

(Actually, you can see improvement if that is what you want to see... just don't expect respect for your measuring system.)

Ignorance is bliss. What you don't know won't hurt you... for now.

I've got to write more.