The Skill and Will Matrix

Yes, it's the National Independence Public Holiday. And it's been a very productive day. After months without a post, I finally posted something today, took my family to watch Kung Fu Panda 2 (well, it was not as excited the first part though). But hey, I'm not gonna write a post about Kung Fu Panda 2 review here.

So, about a year ago I posted something about coaching. Well as the year gone by, I learned a couple of new skills. Again, thanks to my coach Vishal. Missed the buggard by the way. It's been almost a month since he left to go back to India. Again from that book that he gave me, The Tao of Coaching by Max Landsberg comes this very useful tool. This tool will be very useful to boost up your team performance, it's called "The Will and Skill Matrix".

Ever wonder why're your team is not performing? Or why the performance declined?

Well, the answer lies in one the three possibilities, they may have problem with their skill, or their will, or a mix of both. Will can be referred as their passion in doing their job, while skill is referring to the abilities needed to perform their job. You can use the matrix to diagnose your team's condition (like a doctor diagnose their patients). Here's what you can do, and what I've tried on my team :

• You can create a simple questionairre on your team's will and skill. Mine was just simply asking them on a 1 - 5 scale what's your skill and will condition (of course, you have to explain first what do you really mean by will and skill). Make the questionairre anonymous so they will tell you the truth.
• Plot the result on a chart.
• Prepare to be surprised.

Let's say I have five persons in my team, and I plotted out on a chart.

Wow.. No wonder my team is not performing. They have sufficient skills but they are all in the low will quadrant. Of course you can compare your "little survey" with your own assumptions on the team's condition (and see how this match, it's also train your intuition on the team's condition).

The homework for you as the leader or their coach is to probe on why they have such low will? Was it because they got demotivated? Then why? Because too much stress and pressure? Or most of the time was simply just because of you.

Because the diagnosis survey was performed anonymous, then after you figured out each team member's position from that one-on-one sessions. Then as Max Landsberg said in his book, this will guide you on what the appropriate coaching style for each individuals.

Well, I leave the details on each approach for another post. Where I suppose you can figure it out on how to apply these approaches.

As you've already figured it out, that our objective is to get the whole team fall into that upper right quadrant over there. Where you can delegate easily, and really saves you a lot of times.

I guess Vishal is on that bottom right quadrant, that's why he needs a break and went back home to India. To improve his will. When we fall into that low will quadrant, we need to put everything on a stop sometimes and simply take a break.