Franchise Update Magazine Issue II, 2014 | Page 25

BY BILL WAGNER

If Six Were Nine
Evaluate your direct reports to accelerate growth

R

ecently, I presented at a CEO
peer-to-peer group in Ottawa
and was having dinner with
the group’s facilitator, Carlos
Fox. Carlos has a game he plays with his
CEO members and it goes like this…
Rate your direct reports on a scale
of 1 to 10, 10 being excellent. I’d like
you to consider their performance, but
more so their potential. The challenge
is that you can use only two numbers,
6 and 9. Clearly a 9 is a person who is a
great performer as well someone with
high potential. There are two types of
6’s: one will always remain a 6 and will
rarely grow beyond a 6; the other has
the potential to grow to a 9 in a relatively short time.
We are always looking for ways to
measure leaders and their capacity. We
are looking for ways to justify a decision
about hiring, promoting, and/or keeping an employee, and we want to have
more objective feedback in this pursuit.
Consider evaluating your direct reports
and rating them with either a 6 or a 9.
Here are six questions that may help
you in the process:
1. Think about the positions that report
directly to you. Are they more strategic
or tactical in their requirements? Then
compare the behavioral requirements
of the position to the capacity of your
direct reports.
2. Do your direct reports think more
strategically or more tactically? As a rule,
a strategist can think more tactically,
whereas a tactician has difficulty with
bigger-picture thinking.
3. When considering your direct reports and the strategic or tactical question, ask yourself what strategic initiatives
each of your direct reports has brought
forth in the past year.
4. Imagine you have just taken own-

ership of an identical operation just a
few miles away and can take as many
of your direct reports to this new company as you want, no questions asked,
and there are no legal, moral, or ethical
considerations. How many would you
take? If you’re not willing to take all of
your people, you have issues.
5. If each of your direct reports came
into your office tomorrow and submitted their resignation, based on their

One of the
greatest
challenges
leaders have
is that they
have very little
appreciation
about why others
can’t do what
they so easily
accomplish.
performance and potential you can either accept their resignation or try to
convince them to stay. How many are
absolute keepers?
6. Ask your direct reports about their
own direct reports by saying, If you were
paying your direct reports from your own
pocket instead of mine, would you still
want them on your payroll?
One of the greatest challenges leaders have is that they have very little appreciation about why others can’t do
what they so easily accomplish. How
long has it been since you’ve missed a
day of work because of illness? Years?
Of course, and that is the issue. You hold

yourself to high standards. Wouldn’t it
be nice to begin holding others to those
same standards? You can—you just need
to be able to measure those standards.
So the $64,000 question is how?
First, it’s essential to use a behavioral
tool to measure the expectations for all
positions in your company. If you don’t
know what your specific expectations are
someone will probably be disappointed,
and it will probably be you.
Second, measure the personalities
of every employee. You’ll then want to
compare their role against your expectations. The greater the gap, the more
difficulty they will have doing the job.
Third, I highly recommend that each
leader of your company participate in a
behavioral 360-degree leadership sur