Missional Monday 3 of 7: Transforming Behaviors to Align With Your Mission

By Michael Neill, CSE Welcome to Missional Monday No. 3. Today I want to focus on the second action of a missional leader, “Transform behaviors in alignment with mission.” Last Monday, we focused on ensuring that the credit union has a compelling mission. This week is about leveraging that mission into engagement in the mission. Leaders cause change. They understand that the larger, organizational outcomes of change always follow changed behavior on the part of individuals within the group. Many managers focus on planning for and implementing systems and processes that will hopefully create improved outcomes. Then we “hope” the employee will follow the plans we made and implement the processes. When they do, most often it is not because they are engaged in the work. They are simply following procedures or direction. Therefore most employees do the task to the minimmm. Remember the Gallup Group Employee Engagement Survey results? It found that 55 percent of employees say they are disengaged and 16 percent say they are actively disengaged. To change behaviors and create engagement, I suggest two missional leadership behaviors:

1. Catch employees doing things right, and relate the behavior back to the mission.
2. Hold employees accountable for behavior that is not in alignment with the mission.

Here’s more on each of these behaviors:  1. Catch employees doing it right – As we discussed, when you only catch employees doing it wrong, they gravitate to doing less work, which provides fewer opportunities to make mistakes. The employees do not go above and beyond for the members and teammates, but focus on always following the rules. As we said, “It is hard to be exceptional without ever making an exception.” Here are some things to start doing this week for you and your management team that will help you with this: Focus on noticing someone who exhibited a behavior or created an outcome that is missional. Recognize that person in a public way and be sure to tie the behavior or outcome back to the mission. For example, here is an email that all employees would see:

“I want to commend Judy Wright for her work with a member to not only do the loan requested, but for noticing—as she reviewed his credit report—that she could refinance one of his other loans, and save him a total of $1,200. This is a perfect reflection of our mission, ‘Improve the financial life of our members.’”

Develop a “missional intranet page,” where employees can post stories and examples of their teammates acting missionally. Also, post progress on the credit union’s annual goals, relating how each goal ties back to the mission. Make tracking reports highlight those who met or exceeded the initial expectation, rather than those who did not meet the expectation. 2. Hold employees accountable for actions that are not in alignment with mission. As you can see, this Missional Monday post is all about behaviors. When employees exhibit behaviors that are not in alignment with mission, we have to hold them accountable, not just for outcomes, but behaviors. Here are some things to start doing this week that will help you with holding employees accountable. Instruct all managers that when they meet with their employees that they need to focus on how the outcomes of their behaviors did or did not help the credit union live out its mission. If the outcome/result of the employee’s effort is not satisfactory, ask the employee how they plan to change behavior. For example, the manager might say:

“Jane, you didn’t do a very good job of living out our mission to improve our members’ financial lives. I can tell that because you did not meet your minimum expectations in selling. What are you going to do differently next month to live out our mission?”

 

Tell managers they have your support to correct behaviors of employees, even long-standing behaviors, that are not missional. Make sure they understand no one is a “protected” employee because of tenure, specialized knowledge or quantity of work produced. Moreover, let the managers know you expect  them to deal with non-missional behaviors. Get managers some coaching that will give them confidence they will have the skills to be able to coach behaviors.  Feel free to request  a free copy of my book, Coaching for Maximum Performance, which deals with this, and many other coaching challenges. On this Missional Monday, and every day that follows, let’s be leaders who are committed to aligning behaviors with mission. We’ll be amazed at how much more engaged our employees become. Michael Neill, CSE, is president of Michael Neill and Associates, Atlanta. Read part 1, part 2, part 4,  part 5, part 6 and part 7 of the missional leadership series. Learn more about ServiStar, a joint offering of CUES and Michael Neill and Associates.