Note: This post originally appeared on YES Prep's blog, The Answer.

I had an interesting experience awhile back on the way home from Dallas that has major implications for our work in education.  My 6-year old son was sitting in the backseat with our three other kids and was behaving patiently.  Read those last four words again.  That alone was a miracle.  Typically, he says the same things over and over such as “when can we watch a movie” or “I’m hungry” or “I need to go to the bathroom” or “are we in Houston yet,” five minutes after we’ve left. 

But on this trip, we set the expectation at the outset that the first two hours of the drive would be in silence to allow our younger kids to sleep.  He obeyed, and this is when the interesting thing happened.  I turned around after two hours and said, “Bennett! Wow! You have been so patient. Great job, buddy! (Pat on head) Let’s eat a snack and watch a movie.”  He beamed.  We turned on a movie and enjoyed the rest of the drive.  He was less irritating than normal for the remainder of the trip and that night as I tucked him in, he proudly said “I was really good in the car, wasn’t I?”  It’s all he could think about.  I confirmed his statement and re-affirmed his awesomeness.   As I walked out I wondered why he was so stuck on that moment and then something I read from Ken Blanchard, famed leadership guru, came to mind:
 
“People who feel good about themselves produce good results.”
 
In Blanchard’s management methodology, the way to motivate good work -- whether on my car-drive home or in education -- from our students or team members is to set clear expectations (we’re driving in silence for two hours) and then praise good performance (You have been so patient.  Good job, buddy!).  When people know what a good job looks like they are significantly more likely to repeat the behavior in order to get the praise.
 
Problem is, 1)  We don’t set clear expectations to begin with or we assume our students or team members know how to be successful  2) we often wait until we see perfect behavior before praising and/or 3) we observe great performance but never articulate it. We might share it with a colleague or fellow teacher – “hey, did you see what Sam did? He’s great…” – but not with the person who needs to hear it most.
 
Remember, “The journey to exactly right is made of a whole series of approximately rights.” Don’t wait until mid-year meetings, team meetings, weekly check-ins, or newsletter shout-outs to praise good performance.
 
Here are five steps to becoming a mind-blowing praiser:

1. Praise immediately.  No need to plan it out, just go for it!  It’s not like critical feedback – no one will be offended if you just blurt out praise for them.
   
2. Be specific.  They may appreciate a ‘Good job lately, Sara!’ but it won’t have the same impact as knowing exactly what they did well.
   
3. Pause to let the person feel how you feel about their awesomeness.
   
4. Memorialize the moment with a high-give, fist-bump, handshake, shoulder pat, or other physical gesture.
   
5. Encourage them to do more of the same.
   

The rule I strive to live by is to articulate the praise the second it comes to mind, whether via email, in person, or through a text or phone call.  Don’t let it die in my mind.

I read an interesting fact recently from a poll by the John Templeton Foundation.  The survey questioned 2,000 people on gratitude and found that most people think their gratitude is increasing while everyone else’s is going down.  The truth, revealed from the survey, is quite the opposite.  Only 15% of people express daily gratitude to friends or colleagues and 74% rarely or never expresses gratitude to bosses.  The same likely goes for praising.  And couldn’t we all use a little more praise?

Most leadership development training operates from a flawed paradigm -- "if we study the behaviors of effective leaders and then replicate those behaviors we, too, will be effective leaders." Rationally, that makes sense. But in practice it doesn't work that way because the more we replicate the behaviors of someone else the less authentic we become.

Anyone who has taken on a leadership role has experienced inauthenticity. We all do it. We get into a position of authority and must choose what kind of leader we will be. Naturally, we think of leaders we've respected and followed and begin to pattern ourselves after them. We say what they would say and do what they would do. Our meetings and check-ins, speeches and interactions, feedback and evaluation mirrors those leaders. We may even portray their mannerisms and tics.

The result is that few people follow. Why?

Followers feel disconnected and distant from an inauthentic leader.

Some realize this early on and begin to get clear about who they are. Others, myself included, take it one step further. We begin to study leadership, attend professional development, read books and articles, and learn new skills. We deploy these techniques in hopes of winning back followers and moving along the work. In the short-term this strategy may even show glimpses of success. But in the long-term it fails.

"When leaders do their best work, they don’t copy anyone. They draw on their own values and capabilities." -Robert Quinn

Authenticity is a source of power. When you know who you are, why you do what you do, what you do best, and where you thrive, this self-knowledge builds confidence and resilience. Instead of trying to be someone you're not, you become more of who you are.

More importantly, leaders who are authentic build authentic followers -- people follow the leader for the right reasons and become more authentic themselves. Authenticity breeds authenticity.

In addition, self-knowledge becomes a lens through which you see various leadership actions and behaviors and apply them while honoring who you are. In other words, you delegate according to your style, manage based on your values, and lead from a place of power born of self-awareness.

And guess what? People respond. Because we all want to follow someone genuine. These people release in us the desire and confidence to be more ourselves.

There is no greater investment you can make in your leadership development than to get really really clear about who you are.

"Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It's precisely that simple, and it's also that difficult." -Warren Bennis

Think about your team for a moment. How many are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing most, if not all, of the time?

Hopefully most, if not all, of them.

That said, I'd guess you have at least one individual who isn't on point. So why don't people do what they're supposed to?

Take a look at the list below -- it's one of these 15 reasons:

Let me make it even easier, because chances are if someone isn't doing what they're supposed to be doing it's for one of three reasons:

1. They lack training.
2. They have an attitude issue.
3. They have personal problems that have trickled into their professional life.

But here's the real key: most of the time it's number 1.

We like to believe people have attitude issues or personal problems and give ourselves as leaders the benefit of the doubt. Surely we've done all we can to prepare them for success, right?

Usually, the answer is no.

In my work with leaders at all stages of leadership in all types of organizations I've consistently come to the same conclusion as Ken Blanchard, the father of organizational behavior: Most issues are training issues.

So how do you set people up for success?

It's all about effective activation. Activation means that you do six things really well before any project is delegated:

1. Define the goal or objective.
2. Tell them what to do.
3. Show them what to do.
4. Let them try it.
5. Observe their performance.
6. Praise their progress or reset back to steps 1-5 if they don't do it quite right.

These six steps make all the difference. Skip a step and expect a different result.

So, if a team member isn't performing, check your activation process first. Were they ever set up for success in the first place?

Note: This post originally appeared on YES Prep's blog, The Answer.

Trust moves people. Said another way, people don’t move until they trust you.
 
At the end of July, I attended a camp for 150 teenage girls as a youth leader. My job was to manage the ropes course, meaning I strapped myself to a belaying rope and supported girls as they climbed 25-foot walls, sometimes cheering them on and more often than not literally hauling them up the wall.
 
Time and again these girls would approach the wall, attach their harness to the rope, and start climbing without ever asking me for any credentials, expertise, or past experience. Did they know I had just learned how to belay someone 5 minutes earlier? Probably not. But they didn’t need my resume or list of accomplishments because something else existed – inherent trust.
 
I firmly believe that if we truly understood the power of trust we would do NOTHING during the first few weeks of the year but build trust. Literally every meeting, every class, and every interaction would be focused on trust-building.
 
The reality is nothing gets done without it. It’s a currency. Just like you can’t walk into Chipotle and demand a burrito, you can’t walk into a team meeting or classroom where trust doesn’t exist and demand results. You also can’t walk into Chipotle and coerce, influence, or manipulate the cashier into giving you a burrito and expect to get it. You pay money and you get the result you desire every single time.
 
Likewise, your class or team isn’t a group of people to be coerced, influenced, or manipulated. They want to be bought. And the price they’re asking is high. They want you to buy their effort with trust and lots of it. They want to trust that you have their best interest in mind, trust that you will develop them, trust that you will advocate for them, and trust that you won’t let them down. They want to trust that they can be who they are and that will be acceptable. They want to trust you and the team with their failures, anxieties, doubts, and fears. We all want to trust others and feel trusted in return.
 
When your team members or students feels trust, they do this (from Lencioni, P. (2011). Team assessment report. The Table Group, Inc.):
 

• Acknowledge their weaknesses to one another.
• Ask for help without hesitation.
• Ask one another for input regarding their areas of responsibility.
• Acknowledge and tap into one another’s skills and expertise.
• Willingly apologize to one another.
• Are unguarded and genuine with one another.
• Can comfortably discuss their personal lives with one another.

 
So how do you know if your class or team has trust? Easy. Are they doing the things above? If not, you may want to back up and build trust. Here’s how:

1. Be vulnerable – It seems counterintuitive, but the best way to build trust is to show you aren’t perfect. The key is to be strategic. Not all audiences need to hear all weaknesses, fears, struggles, doubts, heart-wrenching stories, or even all aspects of who you are, where you come from, and why you’re here. Choose what to share with whom, always remaining true to yourself. But push yourself to be a little vulnerable and watch the trust skyrocket. By the way, stories of success and happiness can feel equally as vulnerable as stories of failure, and they build trust as well.
2. Build character – Walk the talk. Simply live with integrity. Be the same person in the dark as you are in the light, from meeting to meeting, class to class, and home to work. And genuinely care about people. The most trustworthy people aren’t in it for themselves.
3. Build competence – Know what to do and how to get it done. Know enough about the technical side of your job to guide others. Learn strategies for putting your knowledge to work and share those strategies with others. And navigate the relationships in your school with adeptness.

 
The great Warren Buffett said, “Trust is like the air we breathe. When it’s present, nobody notices. When it’s absent, everybody notices.” The only way over the wall is to trust. So pump some air into your team this week – TODAY – and focus on trust.
 
For more leadership insights and tips add me on Twitter @dustin_lead!