Cameron Herold says managers need twelve core skills like coaching, delegation, and running meetings. He maps a learning path from not knowing what you don't know to automatic competence, using pre-tests, training, role-play, and practice to get leaders there.
Chapters
So I was thinking a little bit about this morning about how do we know if our managers and our leaders have the skills they need to do the job? And the reality is there's probably, you know, let's say a dozen core skills that, that all of our managers and leaders really need to be good at. They need to be good at situational leadership and coaching, delegation, time management, problem solving, running interviews, running meetings, one on one meetings, classroom teaching, you know, all the, the real executive functioning skills that all of our managers and leaders really need to be good at. So like in anything in life, we go through a bit of a cycle in terms of our competence or our skills at doing something. So you know, if you, if you ride a bicycle right now as an adult, you don't really think about it, you kind of hop on the bicycle and you go for a ride because you've now got this level of that unconscious competence, right? So I don't know if you've heard of this concept before, but right now most of our managers don't know that they suck at most of the skills they need, right? So they have unconscious uncompetence, right? They don't know they suck at interviewing, they don't know they suck at running meetings, they don't know they suck at time management, they don't know that they're bad at coaching or delegation, et cetera. So if they don't know that they're bad at something, they don't even want to get better at it because they don't know they're bad at it. They have that unconscious incompetence. And so what I do in all of my training sessions and including in my invest in your leaders course is we start every module with a pre test so that people do the quick test and they fail and they realize, oops, I suck at it, I should get better. So it shows them they're bad at something. And then we want to get them to the, the conscious incompetence, right? The now I know I'm not good at something. That's the pretest in learning. So as soon as you get your, your managers and leaders to know that they're not good at the core skills they want to learn and then you start giving them the skills. So you train them, whether it's in my invest in your leaders course or by running training programs internally, maybe you have a learning department or training department or maybe you have the skills and resources already internally to train all of your people on skills. So let's, let's pick a Skill as an example of, let's call it interviewing. Interviewing. So have we trained all of our managers on how to do a job interview? Do they know how to use open questions, closed questions, the pregnant pause? Do they know how to review the resume? Do they know how to ask all the probing questions? They know how to use the thread of reference check and do they know how to balance the asking of questions and selling, etc. So as long as you've trained everyone on that, they might have the competence to do a job interview. If they don't have the competence, they're at that unconscious incompetence, right? They don't know that they don't know how to do something. So you do the pre test. Now they realize they want to learn. You give them some of the skills they now have the conscious competence. So they, they know that they now have the skills. And that's kind of a good level to get at with, with your managers and leaders. But over time you want to practice with them, you want to role play with them, they want to be doing it in their job. You want to do talking about how the, the skills that they've learned are working so that they're kind of reflecting on, on it. So they go through the abstract conceptualization, active experimentation, concrete experience, and then the reflective observation and, and all of a sudden the skill kicks into this unconscious confidence. So they don't even know that they're really good at it. So it's interesting because over the years I've had dozens of hours on training, literally dozens of hours, probably 50 hours training on job interviews. I've had training on situational leadership, probably about 50 hours of training on situational leadership and on coaching and delegation classroom sessions that I've been, been doing. I've done role plays and practices. I've had myself filmed doing all of these different skills. So my, my skill levels got to a level that I've, I now take it for granted that I'm so good at these things because it's now the unconscious competence. And that's really where we want to get our leaders to, is that their skill levels have gone from the they don't know they suck at it to now they know they suck at it to well, they're getting better at it, they know they're getting good at it to they don't even realize they're good because their skill level has gotten to that level. So that's the whole purpose of using a course like invest in your leaders or for you to have your own internal training program. Again, I'm not trying to sell you my investor in your leaders course. I think you should all take a look at it to see the 12 core modules and make sure that your company is at least training those people, whether it's books or videos or internal training programs or doing the course, what have you. But make sure that all of your managers and leaders have the skills to do what they're doing so that they are at a level where they don't even realize that they're that good at it anymore. That's the big challenge for all of you to think about going into next week.
