You have one management style. It is the one that suits you, and it lands on everybody the same way. Two of your people are fine on it. One is quietly drowning and covering it well. One used to be your best and now does exactly what is asked and nothing more.
The Will/Skill model, set out by Max Landsberg in The Tao of Coaching, says those four people need four different things from you — and that giving somebody the wrong one is often worse than giving them nothing at all.
What is the model?
Two axes. Skill is what somebody can actually do: knowledge, experience, competence at this particular task. Will is everything else that decides whether they do it: motivation, confidence, energy, whether they want the job in front of them.
Score both from low to high and you get four boxes. Each box has a different job for you, and only one of them is delegation.
High will, low skill: guide
Keen and green. They want it and cannot do it yet. Your job is teaching: show, watch, correct, let them run it, review. Give them work slightly beyond their current level and stay close, because the will is the fragile part. One unsupported public failure early on moves them into the fourth box, and it takes months to get them back.
High will, high skill: delegate
Able and willing. Your job is to get out of the way, and to hand over decisions rather than tasks. Handing over tasks keeps the thinking with you and eventually bores capable people into leaving. Agree the outcome, agree when you will next talk, then leave it alone.
Low will, low skill: direct
Neither yet. Clear instruction, short cycles, close review, small units of work. This is a legitimate place for a new starter to sit for a few weeks. It is not a legitimate place for anybody to sit for a year. If directing is not moving them within a defined period, you have a recruitment decision rather than a management one.
Low will, high skill: excite
They can do it and they have stopped wanting to. This is the hardest box, the most valuable, and the one owners handle worst. The instinct is to performance-manage. The job is to find out what changed, because something did.
Why it matters to an owner
Your management attention is a budget, and it is small. In a business with eight or ten people an owner has perhaps five or six usable hours a week for one-to-one leadership. The model is really a tool for allocating that budget, and most owners allocate it badly, because time drifts towards the people who are enjoyable to work with rather than the people who need it.
The second point changes how the model gets used: the box belongs to the task, not to the person. Your best fitter is in the delegate box on a bathroom and in the guide box on managing an apprentice. The day you promote somebody, you move them from a box they had earned into one they have not — and if you keep managing them the way you did last month, they will fail at a job they could have done.
How to use it this month
- List the tasks, not the people. For each person who reports to you, write the two or three tasks that actually matter in their role. You are about to score tasks, not personalities.
- Score will and skill separately, out of 10, quickly and honestly. A gap of three or more points between the two is where your attention should go first.
- Audit where your management time actually went. Log it for five days. Most owners find a good deal of it sitting with the person who needs the least of it.
- Move one hour. Take an hour from your delegate-box person and give it to your guide-box person, in the diary, as a standing slot. That single change does more than most training courses.
- Have the excite conversation. Open with the observation rather than the accusation: two years ago you would have been all over this, and you are not — what changed? Then stop talking and let the silence do the work.
- Re-score in ninety days. If nobody has moved, the model was interesting and nothing else. Movement is the only evidence it was used.
The mistakes to watch for
Reading low will as a character defect. In an owner-managed business, a high-skill person with low will is nearly always a story about the business rather than the person. Something was promised and not delivered. Somebody was promoted over them. The goalposts moved. Or, most commonly, they have done the same job at the same level for years and nobody has ever asked them what they want next.
Two related errors. Owners mistake quiet for low will, because some people simply do not perform enthusiasm. And owners get comfortable in the guide box, because teaching is enjoyable and being needed is pleasant — so the guiding never ends, and the person never gets the authority that would prove they had learned anything.
The third is scoring people rather than tasks, which turns a management tool into a label. Somebody who is “a box three” in your head has stopped being somebody who simply has not been taught this particular job yet.
The questions to sit with
- Out of 10, how confident are you that your management time goes to the people who need it rather than the people you enjoy?
- Who in your business has stopped wanting it — and what did the business do to put them there?
- Which of your people have you been guiding for so long that the guiding has become the reason they never take a decision?
- If you were away for a month, whose box would change, and what does that tell you about how the business really runs?
The box describes one person on one task this month. It is not a description of who they are — and the day you promote somebody, their box changes whether or not your management of them does.
This sits at the centre of the team work in Leadership Coaching. The uncomfortable finding is usually not that the team is weak, but that four different people have been receiving the same management and it was only ever designed for one of them. Read it with Team Development, which is the same problem at the level of the group, and The Stages of Learning, which explains what teaching actually has to cover. The full set is in the Mindsets library.
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Frequently asked questions
Is somebody's box fixed?
No, and treating it as fixed is the fastest way to turn a useful tool into a label. The box describes one person on one task at one point in time. Your best fitter can be in the delegate box on the work they have done for a decade and in the guide box on managing an apprentice, and both are true in the same week. This matters most at promotion. The day somebody takes on a bigger role you have moved them from a box they earned into one they have not, and if your management does not change with it they will fail at a job they were capable of doing.
What do I do with somebody who is good but has switched off?
Find out what changed, because something did. In owner-managed businesses a capable person with low will is nearly always a story about the business rather than the person: something promised and not delivered, somebody promoted over them, goalposts moved, or years at the same level with nobody ever asking what they want next. The conversation opens with an observation rather than an accusation. Say what you have noticed, ask what changed, then stop talking for longer than is comfortable. Performance-managing this person is the common instinct and usually the expensive one, because you are treating a motivation problem as a capability problem.
How do I know if I am spending my management time badly?
Log it for a week. Write down roughly how long you spent one to one with each person who reports to you, then put each of those conversations against a box. Most owners find that the largest share went to the person who needed the least of it, usually because that person is capable and good company, and that the newest or most stuck person got a fraction of it. The fix costs no extra hours. Move one hour from the capable person to the one who is learning, put it in the diary as a standing slot, and re-score everybody in ninety days.