Emily's Story - a tale of self-discipline

April 19, 2013 - PRLog -- Following a recent webinar I held on talent management, I enjoyed a long discussion with Emily, the owner of a small (but successful) chain of fitness clubs in Northern Scotland.

Her challenge was that she felt she was recruiting a good mix of young and intelligent managers, but their performance was not reflective of their obvious talent. "Ideas are plentiful, but the reality is that the attention-span of my new hires drops as soon as something more interesting comes along." She said.

What Emily had perhaps failed to recognise is that to engage talent (especially those who lack corporate experience), one must first teach discipline. Too often when preaching the value of autonomy, we forget one of the most important principles of management: managing yourself.

Together, Emily and I created a work schedule that continued to focus on autonomy and the end-result. The addition was that we included some key benchmarks to accomplish en-route. These benchmarks provided Emily with an opportunity to discuss the completed work thus far, and then to coach her employees on the next stage (or to rectify early mistakes).

At first, she experienced short-term difficulty (http://www.trevor-brennan.com/blog/the-change-curve.html), however soon found that her team became more efficient and appreciated the extra support. "So much so, they started to rely on me for decisions. I had to be extremely careful to ensure that I remained their coach. It was very easy to decide for them."

Over time, Emily's team started to rely on her less and less, and as they mastered self-discipline, she started to ask for less progress meetings (although remaining ever-watchful).

Speaking with Emily after the process, she said: "What I've learnt is that although my young team enjoyed an autonomous environment, they found it difficult to remain disciplined. This naturally effected our performance, and it was plainly obvious that my guys just didn't know HOW to be disciplined. My role quickly changed, and our plan to teach discipline as a skill paid dividends."