Diagnostic Leadership

Author: Charlie Johnson, Consultant-Leadership Practice

After years of working with the situational leadership model, I discovered its flaws and now present a new model, with more components.

• Priority
• Motivation
• Confidence
• Experience
• Skills
• Knowledge

I don’t believe people can implement their Knowledge and Skills without Experience.  To develop positive experiences, the manager must choose goals that are easily achieved, then move their people onto more challenging goals, always keeping in mind confidence is built through successful experiences.

Confidence underlies motivation.  If I am not confident in my skiing skills I am not motivated to go on a ski trip.  All of us have areas we lack confidence in and it negatively affects our motivation.  The same is true in selling situations.  Setting a goal that has little chance of succeeding does not motivate sales people. It does the opposite.  If a sales rep has confidence selling in the physicians office or ASC, and you ask them to take on a hospital, they may lack confidence and motivation unless you accompany them or train them on the similarities of an ASC to the hospital.  Unless you have experience doing something it is difficult for people to have confidence or motivation.

• Confidence is gained through Knowledge, Skills and Experience.
• Commitment is gained through Confidence, Motivation and the ability to Prioritize.

Providing Experiences:
In order to build confidence, we need to carefully choose the experiences we ask our people to perform early in their careers.  By providing simple and easy to succeed activities we can begin building confidence.  We need to progressively increase the challenges based on achievability to develop the confidence we need our sales people to have to promote competence.  Confidence leads to motivation, motivation leads to Priority.  What is priority? People will prioritize activities they are confident and motivated in performing.  A highly competent sales rep with confidence and motivation will make the most of their time and focus on the activities that lead to sales success.

When we look at this model, it is important to note that the Commitment side is all about emotion.  We interact with our direct sales reps on their confidence, motivation and task.  Why?  If their head is not in the game, they won’t care about what they need to do (the rational plan).

Understand that most people want to succeed, but many feel a hurt and have lost their confidence, which is the foundation of commitment.  Once we restore their confidence then we can move on to motivation and priority, as we have the person’s emotional connection to how success will solve their hurt.  Then we can assess and interact on knowledge, skills and providing experience.

Commitment & Competence 

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