Ep 295 | The SkillWill Matrix

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's make believe that you are bringing two new people into your company, two individuals that are very different, Both in terms of their experience, their resume, their background, their environment, just two different individuals. They just happen to be having the same start date. Individual number one, let's call him Ken. Okay. Ken is experienced. He's been doing this role that you're hiring him for. He's been doing a role like that for about a decade. He's also very motivated. He's very into his career. Like I said, he's about 10 years in. He's just hitting stride. He's about to get to the next level. He hopes in joining you that that's what's going to put him to that next level. He's very, very motivated to do the work. The other individual you bring in, you also obviously like, otherwise you wouldn't bring it, you know, be bringing them into your world. Let's call him Mike. Now Mike lacks the experience that Ken has for the role that you're hiring Mike for. Mike's newer. To the game. He maybe has a year or so experience, so he's still pretty new, but he is highly enthusiastic. He's got a lot of energy, different sort of energy than Ken. Ken's motivated, but he has confidence. Mike, you know, he knows less, he's not as experienced, but he's just a high-energy guy really, really looking to jumpstart his career. So Ken's experienced, motivated. Mike is enthusiastic, but he's also very new. These two individuals, it goes without saying, when you bring them into your world, they're going to have to be coached very, very differently. They're going to have to be influenced by you as the business leader very differently. And I'm bringing this up here today because there is a system, there is a method to doing this right. However, I know I've personally done it wrong, and I'm going to guess that Maybe you have from time to time as well. This usually applies in business, but I actually think it applies outside of business as well. What am I talking about? I'm talking about this matrix that I call the Skill-Will Matrix. You may be familiar with it. I'm not the first person to talk around the Skill-Will Matrix, but it's very applicable here. You've got two different individuals and they both fall somewhere within this Skill-Will Matrix, which this particular matrix helps you find the right, the right coaching style for these individuals. It's really designed to help you assess people's skill and their motivation, and then you tailor your coaching to their needs based on, on this assessment. So I'm going to do my best to try to describe the matrix. However, in the show notes, you're going to find a link to a No Days Off Skill Wheel matrix that you can reference. So this matrix, I want you to picture a box within the box. There's 4 quadrants. Okay? The top left quadrant, write the word guide. The top right quadrant, write the word delegate. The bottom right quadrant, we're going to write the word excite. And the bottom left quadrant, we're going to write the word direct. So clockwise, starting from top left: guide, delegate, excite, direct. Now the y-axis, so the left-hand side of that square, that y-axis, write the word will. And on the x-axis along the bottom there, write the word skill. Okay, so you've got a quad— you've got a box broken into quadrants. The Y-axis is will, the X-axis is skill. So this matrix divided into 4 quadrants, each one of these quadrants reflects a different coaching style that you can use based on people's level of skill and people's degree of will or motivation. There's really 4 styles here that you see, right? First, you see guide, top left guide. This approach is used for those individuals that have high will, but they have low skill levels. If I move to the right, which is delegate, this approach is used for people with high skill and high motivation. Lower right is high skill, low motivation, low will, which is excite. And then direct, use this approach for people with low skill and low will. So going back to our two examples, right? I've got Ken. Remember, Ken is very experienced. Ken is very motivated. He's motivated to get to, to really get his career to the next level. He's motivated to learn. He's motivated to lead. And he's, and he's very experienced in his job. What do I do with Ken? Well, Ken lands in that delegate quadrant. This is someone with high skill and high motivation, and this person needs less of a coach and really more of a mentor or a sounding board. You've got to let a person like this know that they have some degree of freedom and that you're just available maybe to brainstorm, to influence a little bit, but more in a sense of encouragement and helping them kind of take almost a self-coaching approach to their personal development. Now you've gotta, as their mentor, be super clear on the responsibilities, but you've got someone who's highly motivated and highly skilled. So you're going to want to make sure that they're clear on their responsibilities. Your job's going to be to make certain there's no obstacles in their way. And provided that you're right in your assessment, that they're in fact high skill and high will, You mentor, you are sounding board, you remove obstacles, but you let a person like this run. Now, side note, never just assume someone is high skill or high will based on their resume, based even on the interview that you did. The way you're going to discover this is by spending time and observing what this person does. So in my world, I may think someone's high skill and high will, but I'm not going to give them complete freedom until they've proven it. you know, within my business, within, within my company. So Ken, in this example, is someone that would likely fall in that delegate circle. I'm sorry, quadrant. Then you've got Mike. Remember, Mike is super enthusiastic, but he's pretty new, meaning his skill level's rather low. Mike being as enthusiastic as he is and still trying to find his way with respect to skill, Mike's going to fall in that guide quadrant. Low skill, high will. Someone in this quadrant already has the motivation that they need to improve. So your task as their leader is to look for opportunities for them to build key skills and to give them the confidence to apply them. This is where you really, you know, make the big bucks, right? When you've got someone who's really motivated but lacks skill and you can develop their skill, to get them to that next level, this is where, you know, you, you really earn, you really earn, uh, not just respect, but your company grows, you know, taking people that are low skill, but highly motivated to the, to a highly skilled level. That, that's where the growth occurs. So you're going to encourage this individual, Mike, to take managed risks. You're going to want them to learn from experiences. You're going to want to ask a lot of coaching questions. You're maybe even going to want to use that GROW model that we've talked about here at No Days Off. GROW: Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward. That's, that's the style of coaching. What's your goal? What's your current reality? What are the options to close the gap between your current reality and your goal? Oh, and by the way, what's the way forward? So you get to use a coaching model here. You're going to guide someone that's low skill, but high will. So we now know how to deal with Ken and Mike. Now, what quadrants did we miss? We missed the low skill, low will individual, which is someone you're going to direct. What does that mean? It means that if you've got a person like this, you're going to set very clear deadlines. You're going to monitor progress very closely. You're going to constantly be encouraging them, sure, but you're going to have to observe closely and ask, you know, if they ask for help or if you believe they need help, you've got to step in as opposed to letting them struggle. Sure, you can use a GROW model here with respect to their skills development and increasing motivation, but low skill, low will. You're really going to give them a prescription versus suggestive sort of coaching. I'm sorry, versus a collaborative style of coaching. You're going to be very direct, right? You're not just suggesting, you are directing. Now, truth be told, someone that's low skill or low will, like low skill and low will, is likely not to last in your world, but Maybe you want to give them a shot. And that other quadrant that we're missing is the very high skill but low will person. Someone that falls in this quadrant probably has the skills they need to perform effectively, but lacks the motivation to use them. So what's your job here? Figure out what motivates this person, make a link between this and their role. For example, if the person's motivated by new responsibilities, point out where these new opportunities or new responsibilities come about. In their current projects. Highlight, um, where they could focus, things that you believe will in fact motivate them or excite them about their job. You want to maybe get to know them outside of work so you can figure out how to attach what it is they're doing in your world to what it is that may motivate them outside. What's the connect— connection there? So you've got to do a lot of exploration here, and you especially want to aim to reduce or remove anything that's a D, like I would call it a demotivator, right? So this is someone that you have to excite in this particular quadrant, high skill, low will. So we're going through this skill/will matrix. Bottom line, people are always different when they're in your business. When they enter your business, some are high will, some are high skill, some are both, some are low skill, but high will. I mean, you get to figure out the recipe that works for your business. We are not going to always have high will, high skill people, though I would love to have that and we should strive for it. There's a pretty high likelihood that you're going to have a mix of people that are highly skilled, but maybe not as motivated or people that are really motivated, but just not as skilled. So how you coach and influence and lead those individuals matters quite a bit. And what I found in my own personal world, the better I got at understanding where individuals within my organization fell, in these quadrants, and the better I understood how to approach or talk to them or influence them or help them grow, the more my business would prosper, would grow. So the focusing question for you today, I want you to take this quadrant, you know, these 4 parts, and I want you to go in your office, shut the door, and I want you to plot, you know, on this X and Y axis where each of your people may be sitting right now. Seriously, go, go and do this. High skill, high will, low skill, high will, whatever it may be. Go plot on the XY axis where they sit. Based on where they land, I want to ask you, are you coaching and influencing them correctly? My guess is there's probably some people you are doing a great job with, and I'm also going to guess there's probably some people where you're missing the mark. So what could you start doing differently to improve your coaching of those that you're missing the mark on, as well as what can you do to double down on those people that in fact you're doing a good job with and make it great? I think the best leaders really understand, study their people, and figure out creative ways, strategic ways to approach those people, to influence, to create the greatest output, you know, greatest output possible. That's all I have for you today in the No Days Off podcast. Thank you so much for listening, and remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.