Being a manager and a leader is all about providing context to your team.

If there is no context then there is little you can do to manage people and lead them where you want to go.

Change is always with us. Those in leadership roles are supposed to see a path ahead, clear the way and take people on a journey. A journey that makes sense, inspires hope and allows people to achieve their own personal goals along the way as well as the goals of the company.

If there is no context then it makes it difficult for people to know what to do in a given situation.

I know of a number of people who have been put in roles where they have articulated to me that they have no real idea of how to fill that role successfully. It may be there will be a time of searching and “finding the way” but the person who puts them in that role has the responsibility of providing them with a loose map, at least.

This “loose” map is the general context of what the role is meant to achieve. If they are not provided with the map/frame work/guidelines they will neither fail nor succeed.

They can’t fail as there is no clear measure of what to aim for.

Same goes for succeeding, no real measure of what to aim for.

The real problem is limbo. People who operate in limbo in business for an extended period of time lose energy, focus and drive. In the end they give up, leave or, perhaps worse, stay and cause a black hole, a bottle neck on progress in the company.

A leader’s responsibility this to provide the framework within which to operate.

• What are the measures?
• What are the time frames?
• What are the tools and resources at their disposal?

The bible has a phrase that goes something like: “Without a vision, the people perish.” That doesn’t mean they physically die necessarily. It can mean they are stunted, lost (in business to another company) and if we interpret “people” as a group, perhaps the company itself dies as people leave and/or become unproductive.

How to Provide Context

A good manager/leader will be very clear about what they want people in specific roles to achieve and focus on. This will include the financials and perhaps some specific aspect of it.

In the Global Financial Crisis it probably meant debtors, cash flow in the short to medium term.

In recovery it will be a stronger focus in business development, marketing, letting clients know they are still around.

It may be focusing on staff development, reorganizing the business to be more efficient. (Stanford economist Paul Romer said in November 2004, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”)

It is the manager’s role to provide context. It provides a rationale for why things are being done far beyond “Trust me, I know what I am doing”.

Context also provides mirror to hold up to on any critical decisions that need to be made. Want to appoint someone to  new role? In what context? Need to move someone on? Why? In what context?

If the context is clear you will be relieved of dealing with a whole lot of non issues and questions raised by people who simply do not know the context. Provide that context and you will have more people following you.

Why?

Because you know where you are going and you can bring people along with you.

Do yourself a real favour and watch the videocast linked here by David Maister!

Not Qualified to Manage

Great video every manager should watch and ponder.

Following on from “10 Things a Good Manager will Do” are the 10 Things a Good Manager will Be. You will find that some of these items are a “do” as well but the focus in this article is to look at how a manager “is”, not just what they do. Big difference. Enjoy

1. Be Enthusiastic
The best way to succeed as a manager is to be upbeat and enthusiastic. You may not have everyone on board and agree with you, you may not know the answer to everything they ask but if you are highly positive and let them know together you will find a solution to any problem that arises you will be fine. The best thing about being upbeat and enthusiastic is that is infectious, no one wants to have a negative person leading them. Motivation is the key to a successful business, not in the old fashioned “punish if you don’t do well” way but with praise and challenging the team to greater efforts positively.

Most staff will rise to the challenge and perform well for you.

2. Be Trustworthy – Earn the Trust of the Team
Employees work well for people they can trust. They like managers to show competence and be concerned for them. Your employees will work well when they feel their opinions are heard, if they know what is required from them and that they know that decisions are made with them in mind.

3. Be a Good Listener

Employees are motivated when their managers listen to them. Good listening skills need to be learnt and do not come naturally. To create good listeners out of your employees, you should lead by example and be a great listener yourself. You will find people have some great knowledge and that if you take the time to listen you will find out some great ideas that will directly improve the business.

4. Be understanding (don’t judge to quickly)

The key to making good decisions is to weigh up the pros and cons and take balanced risks. Good managers make the best decisions with the information they have at the time. This applies to dealing with employees as well. Never make rash decisions with your team. Never criticise someone’s idea publicly as this may lead to resentment and limit any further ideas from the individual. You should learn to accept and work with other people’s ideas and learn to work as a team together.

5. Be Empathetic

Warmth is a factor a lot of managers overlook and is a great leadership quality to have, most people confuse it with being soft but it really just means being considerate to your employees and showing empathy when it is needed. Empathy is understanding how the other person may feel if you were in the same situation. The American Indian term is “walking in someone else’s shoes.”

6. Be a Delegator

A lot of your team’s potential will be wasted unless you recognise talents and skills and delegate specific tasks to your team. Trusting your employees with various roles and tasks will lead to you having fewer things for you to worry about and show that you trust your team with important jobs.

7.  Be a Learner

No one is perfect, so a key tip is to learn new things that will help you improve. Great leaders will research, talk to others and listen and find out new ideas they can incorporate into their business and team. No management technique and style will be perfect, and if your team or situation changes, you need to adapt and learn how to best deal with this new challenge.

8. Be a Goal Setter

Great managers set goals not only for their team but also themselves. To be a good manager you need to invest time in personal development. Set you and your team financial and personal goals and keep track of them and review them as necessary.

9. Be a Leader by Example

This is a common point that a lot of people will have heard before but is very important. Don’t ask your employees to do something you wouldn’t be prepared to do yourself. If they believe you would do what you are asking them to do, they are much more likely to respect you a do a good job.

10. Be Tough but Fair

A lot of these points cover being nice and respecting your employees, but you can’t be popular all the time. You will occasionally have to make some tough decisions that will not be popular with your team. Hopefully they will understand why you have made certain decisions and at critical points take the time to explain your reasoning.

Managing a people department nationally in Australia is a challenging task. Especially when there are people in management roles who you’ve never met, don’t know their background or their perception on life, business and managing people.

What a GREAT environment to be in as an HR Manager. So many great opportunities to make your mark.

Because Australia is so vast and we have offices in locations that are not national centres (read: hard to get to on a regular basis) we have to do a lot of development remotely. Bring on free technology!

But we must crawl before we walk so I asked my team, “What would be THE 10 things a manager should do in their first 3 months?”

Their responses were great and I provided one list below. Some responses are brief, some are more verbose but, as a list for any manager, they are a good start.

1. Set clear expectations/goals
2. Identify & discuss learning & development needs of staff
3. Mentor
4. Promote creativity
5. Talk about people’s strengths within team
6. Manage by excellence, lead by example
7. Offer feedback
8. Recognise desired behaviours, give praise and celebrate success
9. Engage a culture of participation
10. Delegate/Empower staff

What do you think?

What would be your Top 10?

Everything starts with a thought!

Or, perhaps more accurately, everything starts with a thought in response to some event.

Reading different people’s perspective on the Global Financial Crisis and you’ll see some people advise to “pull back”, become conservative, stop spending, almost hide.

Others think it is a great time to start a business, to buy (while prices are low), train up staff to get them ready for the upturn.

The point is not: “Which camp are you in?” The point is the difference in viewpoint and the viewpoint comes from how people think about a situation.

My brother, a successful business owner, once remarked to me “stop listening to the radio and reading the newspaper and act like nothing has changed.”

My late father in law said in the ‘92 recession: “Bill, there’s ALWAYS money around.”

It all depends on how you think!

So, what are you thinking? Doom and gloom? Peace and prosperity?

Just as importantly, what are your staff thinking? How do they view your leadership in a time like this? They feed off you.

I was reminded of this with my own staff recently and I have to really take notice of how I am talking, acting and responding to the challenges we are facing.

So what’s my point?

The Bible says: “How a man thinks, so is he.” It’s okay, I’m not going to get all “preachy”, but the phrase is worth considering.

You are what you think. “If you think you can, or can’t, you are right!” (Henry Ford)

Look at your business plan. Can you do that? Will you do that? What do you think? Really?

How are your staff coping? Morale high or low? People looking to stay and fight it out or leave at the first opportunity?

If it all starts with what you think, what are you thinking? What needs to change?

When managing people gets too tough and you are trying to please everyone, and we all get into those situations occasionally, the video below will brighten up your day and you’ll realise that HR (and management) is NOT the dumping ground for crap behaviour and stupid attitudes.

So if we come across a bit like this, don’t worry, it’s you, not me!

And yes, sometimes HR does got too far with stupid proposals and programs.

Question: What does a 12 km run have to do with a meeting in the boardroom?

Answer: Nothing … and everything.

If Your Answer is “Nothing”

It has nothing to do with it performance is not important. How you fair in the boardroom depends a lot on what you bring into the boardroom. I had our monthly management meeting last Wednesday. I had information I wanted to present. I could have prepared it all on the Tuesday night. It was just printing and collating. Simple enough. So simple in fact, that I knew I could do it Wednesday morning.

Of course Wednesday morning comes and I am a little slow getting up. The traffic is a little slow and when I hit the print button when I FINALLY get to work, the printer is off, needs to warm up, doesn’t receive the print message. No output.

I am now not only late t the meeting, I do not have my material. My Boss from the east is at this meeting. Enough said.

But, this has nothing to do with a 12km run. But you’d be WRONG!

If your answer is Everything, you are also CORRECT

Preparation is the key to management success. The 6 P’s (the crass version if you please):

“Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance”

My meeting in the boardroom would have gone far better if I had thought ahead, planned my time, checked my technology and, one that isn’t always recognised, used the resources available to me at the time (admin staff, colleagues etc).

Plan and Prepare, the two must under utilised terms in management.

But what does this have to do with a 12km run?

Tomorrow I run the Perth City to Surf.

Last year I did it in 1:04:27.

This year will likely be more than that.

I haven’t trained. I haven’t prepared.

The point is …

I can’t fake my lack of prep for the race and, while I will have all the gear, the shorts, shoes, orthotics, power goo, cool shirt, race bib and GPS … I (me) am unprepared. And it will show in my time, my recovery and, probably, my overall enjoyment.

Just as you can’t really fake your lack of preparation as a manager either. Sure, you’ll have the gear: the parking space, the better car, the bigger office, the team beneath you, the power, the authority.

But if you are not prepared to manage, to lead, it will show: your performance, your team’s stats, your recovery form a bad month and, definitely, your enjoyment of the role.

What to do …

Look over the key responsibilities of your role. What areas are under control? What need more preparation?

Whether you are about to run a race or walk into the boardroom, the Boy Scouts got it right … Be Prepared!

Managing people can be both the most exhilarating or most depressing process.

Most people want to do a good job and will respond well to constructive criticism and encouragement – but not all people.
Some are just too hard to get through to and take up way to much time. I have heard them referred to as VDPs = Very Draining People.
Managing a team is a lot like managing a garden. You can plant all you like, fertilize with kind words, prune here and there but in the end, you’re gonna get some weeds.

You can prevent weeds, or at least minimize them, by feeding the plants well, making sure there is little time for weeds to take hold. But most gardens will have weeds now and then.

I am a shocking gardener. My flower beds have sprinkles of weeds that my better half spends time pulling out. Once a year she get the secateurs out to the roses and prunes the hell out of them. There is almost nothing left.
It’s the same when you manage people. Look for signs of weeds and deal with them quickly. Prune even your best performers every now and again. But prune them well, don’t just hack away.

How to Prevent Weeds

• Communicate what you want, don’t focus on what you don’t want.
• I subscribe to the activity of writing a personalized letter to new starts outlining your expectations
• Depending on team size have weekly for fortnightly or monthly catch ups – nothing formal just a casual “how are things going? (in detail)”
• Prune ongoing poor performance quickly.
• Take note(s) – this is important. If you have to fire someone you need to have ongoing evidence. Yes you do, get over it and just do it!
• Reward the behaviour you are looking for, acknowledge it publicly.

What a good manager has to recognize is that some weeds look like plants. They even tend them and feed them. Some weeds are pretty impressive to look at – they are still a weed! And they still need to be pulled!

The plants that you do have will thank you for dealing with the weeds.

Picture courtesy of Steve Woods

Judgement! I think that is the problem. How are they going to be judged for the year?

There are so many ways of conducting these reviews and I have read a few posts and comments recently where some are advocating a move away from Performance Reviews (PR).

I’m thinking: “Why would you do that?”

The system may be broken but rather than throw it out, fix the damn thing!

Purpose of the PR

Fundamentally, the purpose of a PR is to:

1. Current Situation: ascertain how an individual is traveling in their job
2. Wins: what achievements they’ve had, so there can be some recognition and;
3. Development: where they would like to improve, what roles are they considering and how they want to progress in their career

Difficult stuff, I know.

Different Strokes

Talking with Daughter (C1) the other day she mentioned that her PR was due but she wasn’t looking forward to it. When I enquired why she said that she has to:

“talk about what I’ve done in the year and how I think I’ve gone. What I want is for my manager to tell me how he thinks I’ve gone and get some feedback. All he’s going to do is agree with what I’ve said.”

My view is this is how a PR should be conducted. It is the employees review and their opinion counts. In fact, even more so. If an employee has know real idea how they are performing then I think there is a problem.

Having said that, a good manager will always provide clear goals and targets so the employee can measure themselves. Lack of objectives and targets can be quite demotivating to an individual, at any level.

All PRs should be justified with evidence and I think it is a great opportunity for an employee and a manager, together, to recognise achievements, development opportunities and create a “where to from here” development plan.

I think, in reality, C1’s problem is the seeming lack of real interest from her manager is the problem. But that is not the fault of the PR, that is squarely the faulty of the manager.

Judgement? Or …

Earlier in the post I suggested that “judgement” might be the problem and, for many, I think that is the case. However, it could be worse – the manager could simply be disinterested.

The possibilities of different management styles can be quite horrendous:

1. you have a manager that drives you – tough, sometimes painful and occasionally unfair, your blood boils occasionally too.
2. you have a manager that overly supports you – appreciated but sometimes too sugary, some solid and constructive feedback would be good occasionally.
3. you have a manager that doesn’t care – what on earth are you to do with that? This is less, worse than lassiez-faire

So, when it comes to PR time, give your manager some feedback. Tell them what you need. Be professional but be direct. Tell them how you want the PR to go. Guide them. Many managers behave they way they do because they think that is how they are supposed to act.

None of us get it right all the time.

And, even though a PR can feel like a Tax Audit at times, I don’t know of anyone who has self-combusted or turned into a green tree frog from having the PR completed. It’s just a performance review dammit!

Talking to Child 1 (C1) earlier and how she is so disappointed with her managers. No interest in her development beyond sending her on a course and having no support or interaction afterwards. A great lesson on how to pour cold water on an individual’s enthusiasm.

Many managers these days couldn’t light a fire within their employees if they knew it was something they were supposed to do. Even cavemen could light fires!!! And it seems that few managers realise that is part of their role. Companies that advertise jobs with the promise of “energetic and invigorating team environments” could be questioned for false advertising.

The command and control syndrome is alive and well in many places.

I thought we were living in enlightened times.

Clearly, in many places of work, we aren’t!

So here are some (basic) tips for managers:

• ask, don’t always tell
• coach, don’t command
• inspire your team
• give constructive feedback
• let them talk
• provide clear direction and guidelines

Enjoy!