Tag: CHCO

News, Opinion, Performance, Strategy, Training

Leader Development is Not a Luxury

by Jeff Neal

Federal News Radio’s Jason Miller had a story on April 2 with the headline “Better trained supervisors key to improving morale.” Jason reported on WFED’s CHCO survey and an interview Francis Rose conducted with NASA CHCO Jeri Buchholz. The CHCO survey and Jeri stressed the need for leader development as a means of improving employee morale. I believe Jeri and my former CHCO colleagues are spot on. Absent significant investment in developing the leadership abilities of supervisors, the Federal government is going to have morale and performance issues for years to come.

I have heard comments from folks who say the emphasis on leader development and the role of leaders in driving Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) results is an indictment of supervisors. Nothing could be further from the truth. If it is an indictment of anything, it is the culture that says investing in supervisor training is a waste of time and money. That culture has resulted in budget cuts for training programs, a lack of emphasis on developing the so-called “soft skills” of leadership, and a belief that mission-related training is always more valuable than leader development.  Such beliefs harm agencies terribly. Here is why.

Supervisors drive culture and morale. Other than demographic questions, the FEVS has 84 questions. Of those, 65 are under the control of supervisors and managers. Here is are the 2013 FEVS Questions with the 65 highlighted. So why not blame the supervisors? Easy – it is generally not their fault. For the most part, people are selected for supervisory jobs based upon their technical skills. If we are filling a basket weaver supervisor, we generally look at the basket weavers and pick the one the selecting official believes is the best basket weaver. In many cases there is little real consideration, and certainly no structured assessment, of that person’s leadership abilities. Once they are selected, we put them into a job that requires a completely different skill set from basket weaving and give them little, if any, real training to develop that new skill set. Many agencies send supervisors to a class that is called supervisory training, but it is really just training supervisors on the basics of writing job descriptions, using the rating system, and other basic HR-related skills. The “soft skills” are notably absent in many of these programs. So – we select people who are very good at what they do, but not at what we are selecting them for, do little to develop them, and then blame them for our problems. It seems that is grossly unfair to the supervisors and the people they supervise.

It isn’t that there is no interest by supervisors in real training. At the Defense Logistics Agency, we implemented a comprehensive program for newly selected supervisors. It was so successful, we started getting complaints from people who had been in supervisory jobs prior to the program’s start asking why they could not have the same training. It was clear these folks wanted to do a good job. They wanted the training. Our response was to create a “retrofit” program to give them similar training.

If there is clearly a demand and a need, why does real leader development not happen? For many agencies, it is because leader development is not treated as a budget priority. With shrinking budgets and everyone competing for a diminishing pot of dollars, tradeoffs have to be made. Training has not traditionally been viewed as one of the priorities, and leader development has drawn the short straw when the limited training dollars are allocated. There is often a mistaken belief that it would appear selfish for agency leadership to devote dollars to training supervisors when their employees are not getting the training they need. I believe that view, while it is based on the best of intentions, actually harms the very employees it is trying to protect. If employee views are so dramatically shaped by the quality of supervisors as shown by the FEVS, investing in leaders is investing in employees. In addition to the benefits for employees, there is also a benefit to customers of the agency. At DLA, we conducted both employee and customer surveys. We found a very strong correlation between our employees’ views and how our customers rated the quality of support they got from DLA. On some questions, such as “I have the information I need to do my job,” the correlation coefficient was +.90 or better. It was clear that how we treated our employees was directly related to how our customers perceived the service they got from DLA.

With supervisory skills being so directly related to the FEVS results, and employee perceptions being so directly related to customer outcomes, it is clear that developing leaders is not a luxury. It is not a selfish use of precious resources for supervisors and managers’ own benefit. It can and will drive agency results and make the government a better employer. That makes it a necessity.

News

Vultures and 19th Century Civil Service Reform

by Jeff Neal

This is the first of a series of posts on the history and future of the civil service.

We talk a lot about the merit system and its importance to the integrity of the civil service, and also complain about its flaws. Before addressing some fixes, I thought it might be useful to share a bit of the history of the civil service and how we got where we are today.

President George Washington hired the first government workers based on merit. President Washington’s belief in good government as a basis for hiring  did not survive long past his Administration. The system quickly devolved into a spoils system with patronage rather than merit-based Federal employment.  Federal workers served at the pleasure of the administration and could easily be dismissed. The ability of a President to fill patronage jobs might have been a means of influencing policy, but it was terribly flawed. It caused wholesale turnover in government with every Administration, with rapid and unexpected firing. Henry Clay described Federal employees as being “like the inhabitants of Cairo when the plague breaks out; no one knows who is next to encounter the stroke of death.”  Job seekers actually advertised their interest in Federal employment, along with their willingness to pay for an appropriate position.  President James Garfield described them as “vultures lying in wait for a wounded bison.” One vulture was Charles Guiteau, the man who shot and killed President Garfield in 1881 after failing to secure an appointment in the Garfield Administration.

Reformers, including Senator George Pendleton (D-OH), used the Garfield assassination to press for civil service reform.  The merit-based civil service began in 1883 with the passage of the Pendleton Act.  Intended to rein in the political spoils system, it created or affirmed many requirements that we take for granted today:

  • Open, competitive examinations
  • Establishment of job classes and grades
  • Ban on appointments based on political activity or lack of it
  • Probationary periods
  • Ban on use of official position for political gain
  • Provision for exceptions to the competitive process
  • Veteran preference

The number of competitive civil service positions was only about 10% of the total civil service. The number grew rapidly with a succession of Presidents who turned over every four years or less (Arthur (R), Cleveland (D), B. Harrison (R), Cleveland (D), McKinley (R), then grew rapidly under President Theodore Roosevelt (R). Roosevelt’s history as a member of the Civil Service Commission and his opposition to the spoils system made him an effective reformer. As a Civil Service Commissioner, Roosevelt was a strong, loud and effective voice for reform.

Following his 6 years as a Commissioner, Roosevelt published a summary of his views on the progress of civil service reform. His words from 1895 still ring true today. Here are a few excerpts:

“The man who is in politics for the offices might just as well be in politics for the money he can get for his vote, so far as the general good is concerned…The worst enemies of the Republic are the demagogue and the corruptionist. The spoils-monger and spoils-seeker invariably breed the bribe-taker and bribes-giver, the embezzler of public funds and the corrupter of voters. Civil service reform is not merely a movement to better the public service. It achieves this end too, but its main purpose is to raise the tone of public life, and it is in this direction that its efforts have been incalculable good to the whole community…. Undoubtedly, after every success there comes a moment of reaction. The friends of the reform grow temporarily lukewarm, or, because it fails to secure everything they hoped, they neglect to lay proper stress upon all that it does secure. Yet, in spite of all disappointments and opposition, the growth of Civil Service Reform has been continually more rapid, and every year has taken us measurably nearer that ideal of pure and decent government which is dear to the heart of every honest American citizen.”

(Theodore Roosevelt, “Six Years of Civil Service Reform,” Scribner’s Magazine, XVIII, No. 2, August 1895)

Mr. Roosevelt was so influential in establishing the modern civil service that the building that houses the US Office of Personnel Management (the successor of the US Civil Service Commission) is named for him.

The next post in this series will address reform in the 20th century.