Who is responsible for employee success? Is it the employee or the manager?
What do you think?
Interestingly many employees would say it is their managers responsibility to support them and provide the resources for them to succeed.
For an example, I spoke with a sales rep for a company the other day that suggested it was the companies responsibility to provide him an abundance of viable and motivated leads.
Ironically, the company had no established lead generation program. The owner who happened to be the manager for this employee indicated that the sales rep was hired with the understanding that he would be responsible for generating his own leads.
This is a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately situations like this are not unusual.
So back to the question. In many cases managers point their fingers to their employees to produce their own success. Employees, at the same time, expect the manager to ensure they are successful.
The Level 7 System suggests that both are responsible for the success of the employee.
Let me quickly outline how it works.
First and foremost, success needs to be clearly defined. Goals or results need to be articulated in a clear and measurable way. Doing this ensures that there is not confusion as to whether an employee is succeeding or not.
Secondly, the manager and employee agree on the goals and their individual roles in contributing to results. Specifically, the managers job is to develop the best possible for the employee to operate. Then they provide the training so the employee will be proficient in producing the result defined in the system.
As an example a sales manager develops quality sales processes even scripts as needed. They work with the sales person until they are experts in the system.
Now the employee, or sales rep in this scenario, is responsible for following the system as it has been trained and delegated.
Now if for some reason the employee is not achieving the result or goal, the manager and employee must be communicative and collaborate as needed to make adjustments to the system to improve performance. If the employee is not following the system then they are responsible for their own results and potential failure.
The fact is that in a Level 7 Business managers performance is measured largely by the success of the people who report to them. It is in their best interest then to work diligently to create an environment where their people will succeed. We have found the best approach to this is to develop a systems driven environment.
Employees obviously are focused on producing the results and goals identified for them because its their job.
The Level 7 System is a powerfully effective process when applied and implemented because it creates a collaborative, focused, results oriented environment. It also unifies managers and employees in their approach to ensuring that everyone succeeds.
Interested in learning more about how the Level 7 System works? Here is a link to some great resources.