If Only I Knew About Starbucks Leadership Training 5 Years Ago!

I'm going to assess skill in one of three ways. I either suck at it, meaning I have no skill, I'm okay at it, meaning I have some skill, or I'm a really good expert at it, meaning I have a lot of skill. This is the number one skill at Starbucks head office. So I was being mentored by the COO at Starbucks or the incoming coo. He was doing a one hour call with me every month and a full day in person with me every quarter. We did that for two years. Over the course of that time I learned all the internal leadership training and that was being done at Starbucks. I still actually have it on my laptop. Their entire 36 page training booklet. The number one skill that every VP or C level executive goes through at Starbucks is situational leadership. And they go through more training on it every three months. That's a lot of focus around one skill. Situational leadership was developed back in the 1960s by Dr. Paul Hersey. Wrote a really bestselling book back then called Situational Leader and a management guru named Ken Blanchard who wrote probably one of the best books on leadership still to this very day called the One Minute Manager, which if you have not read, I highly encourage that you do read. It's actually on my favorite books list. If you go on the CO alliance website on the resources tab, it shows all my favorite business books. It's still to this day probably the best business book on leadership. Super easy, it's a two hour read. But the whole area of situational leadership is what became their business models. Leaders need to be this flexible. If you're rigid, if you're always micromanaging the you piss people off. But if you're abdicating, if you're just like dropping stuff on their plate and you walk away, you're going to screw up as well. And situational leadership is the balance of two things, skill and commitment. The traditional model of situational leadership is very confusing, right? It's a really confusing model. So I worked with a behavioral scientist here in Vancouver about 18 years ago and we took the complicated situational leadership model that takes days to be trained in and we created more of an entrepreneurial version of it that I could train somebody in in 15 minutes. So the balance of two things is this skill. The first thing that you have to look at is what's the person's skill level on each of the individual projects on their plate. So if they think about for a second, you've probably got 20 projects on your plate. Some of those projects you might Be very, very high skill in some of the projects. You might be very low skill in or no skill. Some of you might have some. Right? I need to understand your skill level. So what I did in the model is I said I'm going to assess skill in one of three ways. I either suck at it, meaning I have no skill, I'm okay at it, meaning I have some skill, or I'm a really good expert at it, meaning I have a lot of skill and I'm going to give you a rating as a 0. 1 or 2. And a 0 doesn't mean you're a bad human, it just means you suck at that. I suck at writing. I'm a really horrible writer. I could piss off anybody by just writing Happy Birthday. I'm so bad because I'm in my head and I'm going too quickly that I've learned that me writing emails to people pisses them off. It always comes off in the wrong way. It's never my intention. And then I spend days recoiling afterwards. So my skill level at communication is probably very high as a speaker, but probably very low. Maybe middle. I'm probably a one out of two on skill on written communication. Okay, then you're going to look at their commitment level, right? What's the person commitment level on that individual project or situation that they're working on? Now, commitment can vary. Let's say that somebody's brand new in their job, right? A brand new president of a company or a brand new vice president of HR or brand new VP of marketing. Their commitment is varying because they're a little bit nervous, right? So they're a little bit scared. They don't want to up. They don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. They don't really know the team yet. Even though they might be very skilled in something, they might still be nervous. Here's another reason why your commitment might be varying. Who is completely buried at work right now. So if I gave you more projects, even projects that you were really good at and really like to do, your commitment at working on that individual project might not be that high because you're buried. Commitment doesn't make you a bad person, but it's on that situation on that specific project. Currently your commitment is either I'm not into it, I'm kind of into it, or I'm really into it, right? And you have to assess the person's commitment level as a 0, 1 or 2. Okay? So if I was giving you something to work on and you're buried or you're nervous about screwing up, you might give yourself a one or a two. So my commitment around stuff can be varying or can be low. Okay. And my skill can be low. So that's something to consider. Skill and commitment. So here's how you pick the right style of leadership. You're going to decide, is the person a zero, one or two on commitment and are they a zero, one or two on skill? If they have zero commitment and zero skill, you're going to use a development level or a situational leadership level of zero. If they have a one plus a zero, you're going to use a one. Or if they have a one plus a one, you're going to use a two. See how it works? Pretty simple. This was the model that I created out of a very complicated situational leadership model. It works, it's intuitive. It takes you five minutes to teach somebody how this thing works. Here's how you put it into action. We need to remember that there's four leadership styles that we can actually apply to all of the projects that we have. So here's the four leadership styles that you can be using. The S1 style or the D1 style is a very directing, telling, micromanaging style. Step by step, here's exactly what you do. Here's the playbook, here's the system. Follow this and you don't even have to explain why we do it that way. A two year old does not need to understand the physics of why turning a bottle on its side doesn't go glug, glug, glug as much as having one on its vertical. I don't know if you even know that as an adult, but if you're ever wanting to pour antifreeze into a car, put it in sideways with the bottle, you pour it in like this and it doesn't go glug, glug, glug. You pour it this way, the airlock actually forces it to splash all over the place. You teach that to a two year old is too confusing. Teaching it to adults, you're like, oh, interesting. A very micromanaging style, when someone needs to be micromanaged is exactly what they want. If you micromanage somebody who needs to be micromanaged, they will never complain about being micromanaged. They'll think you're one of the best leaders on the planet. A new franchisee, as an example, coming into 1-800-GOT junk, needs to be micromanaged like crazy on almost every area of the business until they've proven that they can do something. In which case we start to loosen up a little bit and we move to the next style, which is more of the coaching and selling style. This is when we're going to give them the plan. We're going to tell them what to do and we're going to explain why we do it. We're going to say to them, what do you think about it? What do you think about the plan? And we're going to get more of their buy in on it. We're going to sell them on it. We're going to explain why we do it that way. When you're working with somebody who's at that coaching style, and this for me is when I'm working with a CEO, any of the CEOs that are in my group coaching programs, when they show up to a group coaching call, they're absolutely in this S2 zone. They're committed. They're paying for me to coach them. They're all in. They might be nervous, they might not have any skill in it, but they want the why behind the what if I just said to a CEO, here's what to do exactly. Do this, here's this description and I don't explain it all. They'd be pissed off if they asked me a question, I'm like, it's not important right now. They'd be pissed off because they already have more commitment. Right? And then you move to an S3 style which is more supportive and participating. This is kind of the open door management. It's like you're competent. You go figure this out, come back and grab me if you need help. I think you got this. Why don't you come up with a plan, show me what the plan is and then we can bounce ideas off of each other. Or show me what you're working on. Hey, that's amazing. Good job. Right Now I'm basically s3ing my 20 year old. I'm just cheering him on. He's starting his own mastermind community right now for entrepreneurs that are in their 20s. You're kicked out at 30. He's running his entertainment business in Montreal. He's off to Europe to do an internship. So he's sending me text messages every two days to bounce ideas around about his business idea. So all I do is cheer him on and push him in the direction to go. Think about it. Right? That's what he needs. But if I was micromanaging him, he'd get frustrated because he's more competent than that on these areas. So this is when you're cheering them on. Come and grab me when you need to bounce ideas. Show me what you're working on. And then the Last style is S4. This is the delegating style. This is when you give the person the project and you don't follow up. When my kids were 7 and 8 years old and I was teaching them how to ride a bicycle, I was constantly running behind them, cheering them on and going, good job, good job. When my kids were a year old or 18 months old and they were walking for the first time, I took photos and I called my parents. I'm like, they're walking. Good job walking. And I don't get all excited when they're walking. Now they think I'm an idiot. Never praise somebody who is really capable and is really into it. It comes off as patronizing. Great job running a pharmacy. You're like, dude, give me some feedback. I already know. Mayor, good job running a farm. You're like, I've been running it for 18 months. We're good. Thanks. It just comes off as patronizing or can I help you run your farm? No. You don't know anything about running a farm or. No, I got this. Right. I'm already into it. I'm excited about it. I'm all over it. The key with these styles is understanding where the person is at on a situation by situation basis. And it comes down to two ways. How do you know where the person where your direct report is at on a specific project? How do you know which leadership style to use with them? How would you communicate? What kind? What would you do? Ask? And what would you say? Where do you think your skill is on this? No skill. Some skill or high school. No judgment. I'm like, well, I think I'm high skill. A. I think you're medium skill. Let's challenge each other. Okay, good. Let's agree on high. Cool. How about your commitment level? Where do you think you are? Here's where I think you are. Let's agree on it. Can he? One plus two equals three. Does that feel good? Yeah. Bob's your uncle. I'll cheer you on. See you on Thursday. You do that on every single project with your direct reports. You get them to self assess where they are, you self assess where they are. You meet somewhere in the middle and you agree on the style to use. No one will ever complain about micromanaging because it's exactly what they need. No one will ever complain about you dropping projects on their lap and running away because you'll be doing it if they need it, or you'll be, you know, applying a different leadership styles.