Commissioning,

Leadership & Motivation

by Thomas Stuenkel
Commissioning & Plant Start-up 2011
Centara Grand at Central World & Bangkok
Convention Centre, Bangkok, Thailand
May 23rd & 24th, 2011
A marcus evans conference
What to expect within
the next 60 minutes?

Introduction Thomas Stuenkel

(2 min)

Motivation (12 min)

Leadership (10 min)

Mini Workshop - Leadership

Style Assessment (30 min)

Questions & Answers (5 min)

Who is Thomas Stuenkel?

Born and raised in Germany

Living in Slovakia

Husband, father and

grandfather

Commissioning coach,
commissioning engineer and
commissioning manager

Founder of
CommissioningCoach.com

President and founder of

STUENKEL s.r.o.
The surprising truth about
what motivates us (inspired by Daniel Pink)
If you reward something do you get more
of the behavior you want?
If you punish something do you get less of
the behavior you want?
Study by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology)

Group of students

Challenges

memorizing strings of digits

solving word puzzles

spatial puzzles

physical tasks

Three levels of reward

pretty well small

medium well medium

really well large cash prize

What happens?
Task involved used only mechanical skill:

Bonuses worked as expected

Higher pay = Better performance

That makes sense!
Task called for rudimentary cognitive skill:

Larger reward = Poorer performance

How could that possibly be?
(Are $50.00 not enough for MIT students?)
Next test in India:

low performance 2 weeks salary

medium performance 1 month salary

high performance 2 months salary

Result:

People offered the medium reward did not

better than people offered small reward

People offered the highest reward did

worst of all
Higher incentives led to worse
performance!
The results have been replicated over and
over and over again!
For simple, straight forward tasks ... if you do
this then you will get that ... GREAT!
When the task gets more complicated; when
it requires some conceptual, creative
thinking ... IT DOESNT WORK!
Money is a motivation:

If you dont pay enough ... people wont be

motivated.

Pay people enough to take the issue of

money off the table.
Three factors lead to better performance and
personal satisfaction:

Autonomy

Mastery

Purpose
The Candle Problem
The Candle Problem
The Candle Problem for Dummies
Leadership is organizing a group of
people to achieve a common goal.
Leadership Framework

BE a professional.

BE a professional who possess good character traits.

KNOW the four factors of leadership follower, leader,

communication, situation.

KNOW yourself.

KNOW human nature.

KNOW your job.

KNOW your organization.

DO provide direction.

DO implement.

DO motivate.
Credit: Clark, D. R., www.nwlink.com/~donclark
Four Factors of Leadership

Leader

Follower(s)

Communication

Situation
Credit: Clark, D. R., www.nwlink.com/~donclark
Leadership
The Commissioning Manager

Selecting an effective commissioning manager is critical

to a successful start-up

Needs a mix of technical and management/organizational

skills - does not need to be a technical expert

Need to be knowledgeable in the process of the

particular plant to be started and that of any plant that is
being tied in to

Should have good administrative and organizational

ability

A personality that makes it easy to get along with

others, optimistic outlook and strong self-motivation
The Commissioning Manager
Commissioning
Manager
Concern
for People
Concern
for Tasks
Concern
for Results
Concern
for Time
Mini Workshop
Leadership Style Assessment
Mini Workshop
Leadership Style Assessment
- First Instructions -

Please take your paper Leadership

Style Assessment and pen or pencil

There are 35 statements

The statements describe aspects of leadership

behavior. Respond to each item according to the
way you would most likely act if you were the leader
of a work group.

Circle whether you would most likely behave in the described

way:

Circle A for Always

Circle F for Frequently

Circle O for Occasionally

Circle S for Seldom

Circle N for Never

Time: 10 minutes
Mini Workshop
Leadership Style Assessment
- Scoring Instructions 1 / 4 -
1. Circle the question number, for
questions number 8, 12, 17, 18, 19,
30, 34 and 35.
2. Write the number 1 in front of a circled
question number if you answered S (seldom)
or N (never) for that question.
3. Write the number 1 in front of any question not circled, if
you answered A (always) or F (frequently) for that question.
4. Circle the number 1's which you have written in front of any
of the following questions: 3, 5, 8, 10, 15, 18, 19, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30,
32, 34 and 35.
5. Count the number of 1's which you have circled. This is your
P-score.
6. Count the number of 1's which are not circled. This is your
T-score.
Mini Workshop
Leadership Style Assessment
- Scoring Instructions 2 / 4 -
Write your P and T scores in the
boxes on your paper.
Your P-score: _____ Your T-score: _____
Your P-score represents the strength of inuence of your
concern for people in your management style.
Your T-score represents the strength of inuence of your
concern for tasks in your management style.
Mini Workshop
Leadership Style Assessment
- Scoring Instructions 3 / 4 -
To assess the degree to which these
concerns are balanced in your preferred
management style, use the diagram on the
following page and enter your scores as follows:
1. Mark your T-score on the left-hand side of the
inverted triangle.
2. Next, mark your P-score on the right-hand side of the
inverted triangle.
3. Draw a line connecting your T-score to your P-score. The
point at which that line crosses the middle line indicates your
score on the Shared Leadership dimension.
Mini Workshop
Leadership Style Assessment
- Scoring Instructions 4 / 4 -
Example
Say your T-score was 9 and your P-score was 11.
Your diagram would look as follows:
15
5
5
10
10
15
Low
Medium
High
T

-

c
o
n
c
e
r
n

f
o
r

T
a
s
k
P

-

c
o
n
c
e
r
n

f
o
r

P
e
o
p
l
e
Autocratic
Leadership
Laissez-Faire
Leadership
Shared
Leadership
High Productivity High Morale and High Productivity High Morale
20
Now, plot your scores on the diagram on your paper.

Leaders ideally should balance concern for task against

concern for people.

If leadership style is too heavily biased in the direction of

concern for task, leaders can be perceived as autocratic and
insensitive by their work group.

To improve their effectiveness, such leaders need to work on the

concern for people aspects of their role. That is work on the people
skills and their relationship with the workgroup.

When under pressure, such leaders revert to their preferred style and become
progressively more and more autocratic in approach, as pressure increases. This in
turn, can lead to a negative response from work group members.

People may still follow such leaders by virtue of the power they have due to their
position in the organisation. However, it is unlikely that work group members will
like or respect such a leader, and they would be unlikely to remain willing
followers if it weren't for the leader's position in the hierarchy.
Discussion of Leadership Styles
Self- Evaluation

If leadership style is too heavily biased in the direction of

concern for people or laisse-faire, leaders can be perceived
as ineffective by both superiors and followers.

Such leaders may be liked and respected by their work group,

with morale high. However, without a matching concern for task
they may consistently fail to achieve objectives in key results areas,
and be seen by their superiors as poor leaders.

When under pressure, such leaders often become increasingly preoccupied with
the impact of the pressure on their team and have difculty focussing on the
tasks to be achieved. They can be perceived by their work group as "ditherers",
ineffective and lacking direction.

Leaders with styles heavily biased towards concern for people can improve their
effectiveness by increasing their task focus through the use of direction setting
techniques such as goal setting, planning, delegation, feedback and control.
Discussion of Leadership Styles
Self- Evaluation

Effective leadership styles are ones

which do not exhibit strong biases
towards either task or people concerns,
but keep an appropriate balance between
the two.

People who score relatively low in both concern for

people and concern for task, although balanced will need
to work on upgrading their level of skill in both areas.
Discussion of Leadership Styles
Self- Evaluation

Commissioning checklists

Commissioning training
videos

Commissioning mind
maps

Commissioning
crossword puzzles

Commissioning
newsletter
Please visit: