Stop Leading Everyone The Same Way: Steal This Strategy Series

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Welcome to Lead with Learning.
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I'm Tess, and here we explore what happens when the science of learning meets the art of leadership.
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Let's get started.
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What if we stopped managing adults based on what we think should work and started managing them based on what we already know about how people learn?
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Because education has spent decades figuring out how people build skills, develop confidence, respond to feedback, and eventually take ownership.
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Maybe businesses don't need another leadership framework.
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Maybe business needs to borrow a few things from education.
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And that's what we're doing in this series: taking proven learning strategies out of the classroom and putting them into work on everyday leadership problems.
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Because a lot of the challenges in leadership aren't management problems, they're actually learning problems.
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I'm Tess, and this is Lead with Learning.
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Let's see what business can steal from education.
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So today's episode focuses on the idea that one size fits all leadership doesn't work.
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I think one of the common pitfalls that leaders could make is also one that's really understandable.
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And that's assuming that if we treat everyone the same, that we're being fair.
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Same training, same expectations, same deadlines, same coaching.
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And on the surface, that sounds incredibly reasonable.
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After all, shouldn't everyone on the team be treated equally?
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Well, yes, but here's the problem: equal treatment and effective support are not always the same thing.
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An education figured that out a long time ago.
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Walk into a classroom, and you might have 25 students sitting in the same room, listening to the same teacher, working towards the same standard, but those 25 students are not necessarily starting from the same place.
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They don't have the same background knowledge, they don't learn at the same pace, they don't have the same strengths, and they don't struggle in the same areas.
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So good teachers don't lower the standard for one student or raise it for another, they differentiate the path.
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And I think there's a powerful leadership lesson hiding in there because your employees are also not starting in the same place.
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So let's define the strategy.
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What is differentiation?
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In education, differentiation means intentionally adjusting instruction, support, pacing, practice, or ways of demonstrating learning based on what that individual learner needs.
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The goal isn't to give everyone something completely different, it and it certainly isn't about creating 25 different plans.
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It's about recognizing that the same destination might require different routes.
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One student might need a visual model, another might need extra practice, another might be ready for a more complex application of that same skill.
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The standard doesn't need to change, the support does.
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And that is differentiation.
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And here's where it gets really interesting for leadership.
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Because we often hear things that sound sort of like, well, I don't want to play favorites.
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Well, good, you shouldn't.
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But differentiation is not favoritism.
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Giving everyone exactly the same thing isn't necessarily fairness.
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Sometimes being fair means giving people what they need to successfully meet the expectation.
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And why does differentiation work?
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Because learning itself at its core is not uniform.
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People come into a learning experience with different levels of prior knowledge and experience and strengths and misconceptions and even different levels of readiness.
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If the instruction is too far ahead of someone, they'll just become overwhelmed.
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And if it's far below their level, they'll become disengaged.
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And if everyone is given exactly the same support regardless of what they need, you're just gonna miss everybody.
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This is one reason effective teaching pays attention to readiness.
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In education, we think, where is the learner right now?
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What can they already do?
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What are they struggling with?
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What support will help them move forward?
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That's a very different question from what am I giving to everyone?
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And that question is incredibly useful for leaders because the answer to what does my team need isn't always the same as what does each person need.
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Adult learning theory gives us an important piece of this puzzle.
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Malcolm Knowles's work on androgy emphasizes that adults bring experience, prior knowledge, goals, motivation, and a desire for relevance into learning.
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In other words, adults aren't a blank canvas.
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They come with history, and that history affects how they learn.
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Imagine you have two employees attending the exact same training.
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One's been doing this type of work for 10 years, and the other has been doing it for six months.
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If you give them the same exact 90-minute training, technically you've treated them equally, but did you actually meet their learning needs?
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Probably not.
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The experienced employee may need a challenge.
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How could you apply this to a more complex situation?
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And the newer employee may need additional modeling and practice.
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Let's walk this through together.
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Same topic, same expectation, different support.
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That's differentiation.
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So let's say you have a team of five managers and you're introducing a new performance management process.
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So you do what many organizations do.
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You schedule a two-hour training.
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Everyone attends, they receive the same slide deck and they get the same examples, and everybody's told, if you have questions, let me know.
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And then the leadership is surprised when, in time, one manager is doing it perfectly.
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And one is technically doing it, but not really.
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One's completely avoiding it and one is doing it absolutely wrong, and the other has done nothing with that information at all.
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So what happened?
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Because everyone went to the same training, everyone got the same information.
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But did everyone learn?
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Clearly not.
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A response to that might be: we need to retrain everyone.
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But differentiation would cause you to ask a better question.
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What does each person need next?
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One manager might just need a quick check-in, maybe another needs to practice having those conversations, and maybe another just needs a modeled script.
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Someone else might need help understanding why the process changed, and maybe you have someone on your team who doesn't need another training on that particular topic at all.
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They need more of a stretch assignment.
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That's differentiation.
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And an important distinction is that differentiation does not mean lowering the bar.
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It certainly does not mean that some people don't have to meet that expectation.
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It means people may need different supports to meet the expectation.
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Let's say everyone on your team is expected to be able to give effective feedback.
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The standard is the same, but one employee might need a conversation framework and some opportunities to role play, even though it's awkward and uncomfortable.
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Maybe they need sentence starters or observation and coaching.
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And someone else might need more complex scenarios or feedback on the nuance of their language.
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Another could be highly skilled in that area, needs to be challenged to develop that skill across the team.
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It's all the same competency.
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It's different developmental needs.
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And that's not lowering the bar.
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That's actually taking the standard seriously enough to help people reach it.
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So, what does differentiation actually look like for a manager?
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Let's break it down into four areas: differentiated support, differentiated challenge, differentiating how you coach, and differentiating the path, not the expectation.
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So let's look at differentiate your support.
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Not everyone needs the same amount of help.
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Some employees need more modeling and some need more practice, and some just might need a quick answer.
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And some might actually just need you to get out of the way.
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And if you give maximum support to everyone, you're creating dependency.
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And if you give minimum support to everyone, you're just creating frustration.
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The goal is to provide the right amount of support for the person in front of you.
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The next one is differentiating the challenge.
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This one often gets overlooked.
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Differentiation isn't only about helping struggling employees, it's also about preventing your strongest employees from becoming bored.
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Imagine your highest performing employees have mastered those basic expectations, and every training you provide is still designed around the person who's brand new.
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Eventually, your strongest people are getting frustrated and annoyed, and they just stop learning.
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So instead of asking, what training does everyone need, ask who needs reinforcement, who needs practice, and who's ready for a greater complexity.
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That question changes your professional learning plan.
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The third idea is differentiate how you coach.
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Some employees benefit from direct feedback.
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Others need questions to help them think and process out loud.
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And some need to watch you demonstrate how to do it.
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Others are best when you give them a problem and let them work through it, and then they come back to you with follow-up questions.
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The goal isn't to develop five completely different leadership personalities.
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It's to become flexible enough to recognize what helps each person learn.
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And lastly, differentiating the path, not the expectation.
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This might be the most important one because your expectations should be clear, but the path to getting there can vary.
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For example, let's say the expectation is managers conduct effective one-on-one meetings.
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Manager A might need a template, B may need an observation and feedback, manager C might need practice asking better coaching questions, and manager D may need to redesign their one-on-one process entirely.
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It's all the same expectation of having those effective one-on-one meetings, but different paths depending on what each person needs and what they understand and where their next step is to grow.
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And let's clear up any misconception about differentiation being favoritism, because it definitely is not.
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Favoritism is giving someone an advantage because you prefer them, but differentiating is adjusting support based on a legitimate need.
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Differentiation is not lowering expectations.
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The expectation can remain exactly the same.
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You're just changing the support, not necessarily the standard.
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Differentiation is not creating a completely custom experience for everyone.
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You don't need five different onboarding programs.
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You may simply need different checkpoints or different opportunities for practice.
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Differentiation is not an excuse for inconsistency.
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In fact, good differentiation requires more clarity because you need to know what's the standard, what does proficiency look like?
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Where is this person now and what's getting in the way?
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That's disciplined leadership, not random flexibility.
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Now, sometimes differentiation can sound exhausting.
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A manager, a leader might hear, so now I have to figure out seven different ways to manage seven different people.
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No.
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Please don't turn differentiation into another 47-step leadership framework.
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No.
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The point is not to customize everything, the point is to pay attention.
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Think about a teacher.
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A teacher doesn't walk into the classroom and think, today I have to run 27 completely different educational experiences.
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Instead, they look at their evidence and they notice patterns.
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They identify who needs what.
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They group people who need similar things together and they adjust.
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That's the leadership skill.
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It's notice, adjust, and check.
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Notice what the person can do, adjust the support or challenge, and check whether it worked.
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Then adjust again.
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That's differentiation.
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So here's the framework I think you might be able to steal from education.
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I could call it same destination, different route.
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Before you coach, train, delegate, or develop someone, ask four questions.
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Where are they now?
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What do they need next?
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What support should I provide?
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And when do I remove that support?
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When we ask where are they now, we're considering what they can already do?
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What experiences do they have?
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And what evidence do you have?
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Don't guess.
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Find out.
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Then when you consider what do they need next, you're asking, do they need information or modeling or practice or feedback or more of a challenge?
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When you're thinking through what support should I provide, you could consider, do I need to demonstrate it?
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Should I practice it with them?
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Do they need specific feedback?
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Or should I just simply get out of the way on this one?
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And that last question, when do I remove the support?
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That one is critical.
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Because if the level of support never changes, all you're creating is dependency.
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Differentiation should evolve as the learner develops.
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The employee who needed weekly coaching three months ago may now only need a monthly check-in.
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The employee who needed a checklist might now be ready to create their own process.
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And the employee who needed you to sit in on the difficult conversations might now be ready to handle them independently.
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The support should change because the learner changes.
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So let's go back to onboarding.
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Imagine three people join your organization.
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One has never worked in that industry before, another person has five years of relevant experience, and the third person has worked for a competitor and already knows all of the basic systems.
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If you give all three of these people the exact same onboarding schedule, you may actually waste everybody's time because the new employee probably needs more modeling, more practice, more context, and frequent check-ins.
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The experienced employee might need clarification on what's different in your organization, opportunities to apply existing knowledge, and the industry veteran might need a quick orientation to the specific systems you use and time to identify the differences, and opportunities to contribute their own expertise.
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Again, it's the same destination but different routes.
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And here's the ironic part because organizations often tell us that they don't have time to differentiate.
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But how much time are they already spending correcting mistakes and retraining people and answering questions and fixing problems that were caused at the start from a one-size-fits-to-all approach?
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Sometimes customization takes more time up front because you're finally investing the time that you are going to spend fixing the problem later.
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And there's another really important benefit here because people notice when leaders actually see them.
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Think about the difference between these two experiences.
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One manager says, everyone needs to complete this training.
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Another one says, you've already mastered most of this, so I don't want to waste your time.
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Here's the part that I want you to focus on.
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Differentiation communicates that the leader is paying attention to the individual, not just managing a collection of job titles.
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So there's also danger on the other side of differentiation because you can over-differentiate.
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You can become so focused on individual preferences that you lose consistency.
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Suddenly, everyone's working on a different set of rules, or they have different deadlines or different standards.
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And that's not differentiation.
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That probably feels like chaos.
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So here's the balance.
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Be consistent about the destination, but be flexible about the route that's taken.
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Because the outcome matters and the competency matters.
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The organizational expectations matter, but how someone gets there can be different.
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So this week, here's a challenge for you.
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Pick one person on your team, not your highest performer and not necessarily your lowest, just a person.
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And ask yourself, what am I currently giving this person?
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Because I give it to everyone, not just because they actually need it.
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Is it training?
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Is it a meeting?
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Is it a check-in?
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Maybe it's the exact same feedback conversation that you have with everyone.
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And then ask yourself, what would this person actually need next?
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Is it more support or maybe less support?
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Maybe it's more practice or more independence.
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Maybe they need a different type of feedback.
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And then try one small adjustment, not a complete leadership overhaul, but just one thing and pay attention to what happens.
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Because differentiation starts with something incredibly simple.
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Paying attention to the people that are in front of you.
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And pay attention to what happens.
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And here's what I think education can teach business about differentiation.
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Leadership isn't about making everyone identical, it's about creating the conditions for different people to succeed towards a shared goal.
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Your employees aren't at the same starting point.
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They don't have the same experiences and they don't have the same strengths.
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They don't need the same amount of supports.
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If your leadership philosophy is treating everyone exactly the same, even if you're not trying for it to be or you didn't realize it was, but you're thinking now, hmm, I am sort of treating everyone the same way, I want you to consider something.
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The things that you're doing that feel fair to you, are they actually effective for the different people on your team?
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Because sometimes treating people exactly the same means ignoring the information that's right in front of you.
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The person who needs more support doesn't get it, and the person who needs a challenge doesn't get it, and the person who needs independence doesn't get it.
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And eventually the manager says, Why isn't my team learning?
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Maybe the problem isn't motivation.
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Maybe you've been giving everyone the same thing, but expecting different results.
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So here's an idea I want you to take with you.
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Fair doesn't always mean identical.
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Teachers know that.
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And good leaders know it too.
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Fair doesn't always mean identical.
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Your job isn't to create the exact same learning experience for every employee.
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Your job is to create the conditions that help each person move towards the same meaningful standard.
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Sometimes that means more support, but sometimes it could mean less.
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Sometimes it needs more practice, and sometimes people need more challenge.
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Sometimes it's just getting out of the way because the goal isn't to make everyone learn the same way.
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The goal is to help people become more capable.
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And that might be one of the most important things that businesses can steal from education.
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I'm Tess and this is Lead with Learning.
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Next time you look at a struggling employee, a disengaged high performer, or a team that isn't developing the way you would expect, don't just ask, what's wrong with them?
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Ask, does my leadership match what this person needs to learn next?
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Because maybe the problem isn't the person.
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Maybe the approach is one size fits all.
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And people, well, people just aren't that.
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Thanks for listening to Lead with Learning.
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I hope you're walking away with something you can put into practice.
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Until next time, let learning change the way you lead.