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Recent guidance — long and complicated guidance — went to agency heads concerning the President’s Management Agenda. The guidance concerned raising the job satisfaction scores of offices and bureaus. Federal Drive host spoke with a longtime observer of federal management topics, who said the guidance reflects a fundamental mistake. That observer is Bob Tobias, a professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
You read that guidance, all 11 pages of it; aside from the way it was written — which was not really intelligible by normal human beings — what did you think was missing?

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Bob Tobias
Well, Tom, the guidance directs agencies to select one of three categories in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey — supervisors, leaders or intrinsic work experience — and directs that they increase the scores by 20% by 2024. Now, that’s a big, heavy lift, and the assumption that agencies will design plans and implement that with success based on prior presidents who have done the same kind of thing, where goals have been rarely if ever met, doesn’t portend well, and the fundamental mistake, I think, is to assume that these goals cannot be achieved without addressing the root problem of why engagement doesn’t increase over time.

Tom Temin
And what would those root problems be?

Bob Tobias
I think it is with federal leaders. I think many federal leaders lack the social and emotional intelligence that they need to create engagement between them and those they lead. I think that this command and control leadership style which is prevalent in the federal workplace needs to be unlearned, and a more collaborative leadership style put in place. And I think federal leaders have to spend less time doing work, and more time spent leading, and that is working with those they lead to create an environment where they really are engaged.

Tom Temin
Part of the problem then could be that often people get promoted to management because of how good they are at specific work. But really, they’re not good at management, and they’re still doing the work.

Bob Tobias
That’s exactly right, Tom. The Merit Systems Protection Board has studied this issue over and over again, and found that the greatest reason for failure among federal employee leaders is the failure to give up what they did best, that got them promoted, when they need to give that up in order to have the time to lead.

Tom Temin
And then the other implication, then is that the government has to somehow make available the training because people can learn to improve their social skills, they can learn to improve their managerial skills, their human relations skills. I mean, that’s half of management. So where do they go to get that? That’s got to be provided.

Bob Tobias
Exactly. So in the past, when agencies have said, well, we need to train these leaders, what they’ve done is created training that would help them fill out evaluation forms, but not how to deliver bad news in a way that can be heard and action inspired. And they’ve taught people how to develop goals, but not how to create an environment where the goals are going to be accomplished. Or training how to deal with poor performers, but when supervisors initiate actions, they don’t get supported.

Tom Temin
Right, that problem of poor performers is really a tough one, because that comes up in the FEVS survey year after year, is ‘my supervisor is okay, but I don’t think they the supervisory layer takes care of the people that are not so good.’ And that’s discouraging to the people who do good work.

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Bob Tobias
It is, it is. There’s no question about that. So the question is, federal leaders need to create an environment where those they lead are willing to give, choose to give their discretionary energy to the leader, where they’re excited to come to work. They’re really excited to create new solutions to old problems, their delegated sufficient authority so that they can really be challenged to make decisions and succeed. And their boss works with them to do development plans, and they feel that they’re seen and heard in the workplace. Now, that’s the environment that’s needed in the federal sector.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Bob Tobias. He’s a professor in the Key Executive Leadership Program at American University, longtime observer of federal management. And sometimes I wonder if the average score across the government of engagement, it fluctuates two points this way, two points that way, whether that’s even worth worrying about. And what you should be looking at is the outliers. If your department has a engagement score of 77, but this bureau or that office is 42, there’s the problem, because averages sort of have a self leveling effect over time and space, that maybe you really can’t move that needle that much.

Bob Tobias
Well, where you spend your money, and how you initially spend your money is important, Tom. I mean, certainly, you begin with the outliers. But the issue is, there’s no beginning at all. And that’s the challenge. I believe that leadership is sort of the infrastructure of employee productivity, it’s the infrastructure that leads to employee satisfaction. So if these leaders do not have those skills, then nothing will change and the goals will not be achieved. So agencies have to make the decision to invest in their infrastructure in their infrastructure is increasing the capacity of leaders in the federal government to lead.

Tom Temin
What then would you have specifically put into that 11 Page guidance that came out from OMB?

Bob Tobias
I would say invest now. Invest now. The research is clear that when agencies invest in leadership development, employee engagement scores increase. But that’s difficult. It’s time consuming, and it’s costly. But the time to spend money is long, long overdue.

Tom Temin
And maybe the focus should not be on scores of surveys, but on actually fixing the underlying conditions that produce the scores and the scores will take care of themselves.

Bob Tobias
Well, they will. And as I say, the research shows that if you make the investment, the scores increase, and if the scores increase, productivity increases.

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