Why Mid-Managers Are Lifeblood from Kevin Burns on Vimeo.
Kevin Burns, Workplace Expert, says most middle managers get very little training and are thrust into a role that most are ill-prepared for. It is the most thankless job and the one with the highest "hassle" factor. Add to that, when the economy tanks, middle managers are usually the first to go. The truth is, I am on the side of middle managers. I want them to get better.
Employees Are Not Created Equal from Kevin Burns on Vimeo.
Too much effort is spent in managing people into conformity. The truth is that too many managers want one employee to be just like another employee - one who models the traits and gets the results management likes. It's counterproductive when managers start trying to manage their employees the exact same way. It's worse when they expect each employee's results to be the same.
If you want to toast with your co-workers, pick a neutral location away from the workplace. Do not, under any circumstances, allow alcohol to cross the threshold of your workplace.
In addition to being responsible for the behavior of your people under the influence, allowing alcohol into the office makes you responsible for virtually everything that your people do between the time they leave the office and actually arrive at home. That includes how they get home. But host an event in a bar or hotel ballroom, and then the responsibility is on the host facility to ensure their guests don’t get too drunk and disruptive.
Do not host a party in the workplace. Your workplace is for working. Bars are for drinking. If you want to have your people enter into a high-performance mindset when they walk through the doors each day, don’t allow them to come out of that mindset while they are in the office by creating a memory of drunken or lascivious behavior fueled by alcohol. Focus.
Build your culture of high-performance by keeping focused. Assess every activity (including the Christmas party) to ensure that you are not sending your people mixed messages. Doing so creates difficulty for managers and hurts your Culture.
If you want to celebrate with your people, take it outside.
Each person on my list will get an appropriate gift and gifts that have meaning for them. How? They told me what they wanted.
I carry a Blackberry and over the course of a year, I have many interactions with the people on my Christmas gift list. In conversation, they will usually give up some piece of information about something they’ve seen, heard about or just gotta have. I simply enter that information in my Blackberry. Then, come Christmas shopping, I simply pull out the Blackberry and purchase a few items from their individual lists. Hey, it’s exactly how Santa does it. You know the “making a list and checking it twice” thing. At the heart of it all is a list. Make one and you take away your stress.
Look you can’t manage Christmas or your family but you can manage how you find the perfect gift - pay attention all year long. Write it down. Get it into a list or a database of some sort. Then, in a few hours, after you’ve mapped out your stores geographically, you are done in no time.
The busiest and most stressful time of the year are the 10 days leading up to Christmas at the malls. Why, if there were a better way, would you put yourself through the stress year after year? You get to enjoy quiet times at home while others are losing their minds at the mall.
Now give yourself a daily reminder on your Blackberry starting December 26 to pay attention to the conversations going on around you. Don’t worry, once you start entering things into your lists it will simply come naturally.
Meanwhile, good luck out there. I’m home with my cup of tea, feet up, stretched out on the leather sofa watching the original Miracle on 34th Street on the big screen. Yes Virginia, there really is an easy way to be Santa.
Some organizations are refocusing and re-naming their Casual Fridays "First Date Fridays" and encouraging their employees to dress as though they were attempting to impress a first date by wearing something appropriate and sophisticated. Others are banning jeans outright so they don't have to deem one pair of jeans acceptable and another not. No flip-flops, no tank tops, no shorts, no halter tops and yes, underwear ... always. Other organizations are offering their employees the chance to dress down (just a little) for a donation to a charity.
Right now the data is being gathered to determine whether Casual Day is leading to a slide to casual service, casual language and casual productivity. I will bet it does. If you lower the standard in one area of your workplace you end up lowering the standard in all areas. Casual is casual no?
The problem is that for the employee, Casual Fridays make the day all about the clothes (or lack of them in some cases) and not about the work anymore. If your people aren't grasping the whole "dress responsibly" thing, it's likely because you, as a manager, have been ineffective in getting the message across.
Casual Fridays is as much a test of communication and Culture as it is about wearing your comfy clothes for a day. If you want your people to dress appropriately, articulate effectively what you would like to see. Otherwise, you'll be putting out fires from staff members who are offended by the dress of other staff members.
Casual Fridays can work but like the other four days of the week, there are standards that must be adhered to.
Oh, and for a chuckle, watch this short clip from CBS's The Office about Casual Fridays.
Organizations have become quite competent at making customers wait and you’re likely quite aware of how long your customers are forced to wait. But have you considered how much your employees wait?
Employees who are forced to wait, especially waiting for fellow workers, cause your people to think. When they think, they reflect on how bored they are waiting, When they discover how bored they are, they blame the job. When they discover how boring the job is, they disengage.
But you, as a manager, can Tweak™ the disengagement out of your people and get them to actively engage. Tweak™ing can identify problems and boredom before they become problems. Tweak™ Management creates dialogue between employees and managers.
Remove wait times for your employees and they actively engage. But only managers who communicate with their people regularly will be able to eliminate boredom. Otherwise, your people sit around waiting to speak with their managers about how long they are forced to wait.
For the organization as a whole, Vision is the more important of the two as it sets up where you want to end up.
However, for the employees, Mission statement is far more important as it determines what needs to be done today.
The problem is when organizations have such a bland and generic Mission Statement, no one knows what they are supposed to be doing. It’s called a Mission statement because it’s the mission: what you’re supposed to be doing. When a good Mission statement spells it out, it makes it easier for employees to make the right decisions.
Would your Mission Statement allow your people to make the right decisions or is it so muddled and mundane that your people don’t take it seriously?
Every department of an organization should have their own Mission Statement that specifically outlines the duties and Culture of the department within the larger framework. A departmental Mission works because, when in doubt, your people can look to the Mission Statement for the right thing to do. If it isn’t spelled out, your people will do whatever they think is best - based on their perception of the right thing to do.
Managers, if you want to be spending less time putting out fires and more time being able to coach your people better, develop a Mission Statement for your department that keeps your people focused, on-task and engaged.
I will bet that the largest number of your people end up in Category 2.
So why is that? Why are you hiring and managing only average people to turn out average work?
Most managers will make the excuse that 80% of workers are considered average - when in fact it is 1% of workers who are average (right on the mid-point) and 99% either above or below average. It is nothing more than an excuse because it lets managers off without having to try harder to coach their people to become higher-performers.
This is how managers end up with an average staff - they accept that this is the hand they have been dealt and then make excuses for not wanting to make it better - because it seems like a lot of work. But then those same managers complain that their staff members aren't engaged on the job. Huh. Imagine that.
It's not workers who have an attitude of "good enough," it's their managers who have it. Good enough lets you off the hook of having to coach better, communicate better and to take more of an active interest in their development.
Yes you do have the time. You just have poor priorities. You're not a paperworker or a meetinger. You're a manager. So manage - priority one. Make your people better and want to be better. You are the coach - they are the players. Are you going for an average season or are you going to attempt to win the championship.
The job is "people-work not paperwork." Re-prioritize.
Your job as a manager is to manage people. Make your people your first priority - always.
Your paperwork and meeting with other managers should be secondary to managing your people. After all, the title is Manager - not paperworker, not meetinger. So do just what the title says - manage.
If you aren't touching each member of your team at least once a day, you're doing it wrong. Someone's going to do it better and your good people will be inclined to go to work for them instead.
People-work not paperwork. Now get out of your office and go meet the people you're supposed to be leading.
So why is it that people are so quick to blame their bosses for not getting ahead at work? Nothing irks me more than hearing that incessant whining of "not being recognized" or "my boss plays favorites and I'm not it" or "it's because I'm (gender, sexual orientation, race, age, weight, etc.)."
Those comments are the result of owning an "entitlement" mentality: you think you are entitled to be further than you are and now you are blaming others for not just giving it to you. Truth is, you are also entitled to be unemployed.
Managers who give credence to the people playing this game for fear of being labeled as a bigot, racist, etc., are just as guilty of keeping this entitlement mentality going.
Look, people who say this stuff do so because no one has told them any different. If they are not being promoted because they aren't competent, then they deserve to be told they are not competent. Saying nothing for fear of offending allows employees to pull stuff out of the air, to make stuff up in the absence of information - and then you have twice the work to do in straightening it out.
If you speak with your people every single day (and that really IS your job - not paperwork and management meetings, contrary to what you might think) and let them know how they are doing in simple ten-second conversations, you end up eliminating a lot of the backlash that could come later. People want to know how they are doing and in the absence of information, they will make stuff up based on what they THINK is the truth. My Tweak™ - The Future of Management program addresses exactly this.
If this is happening to you as a manager then you're not managing, you're defending. And you can't help your people get any better if you're constantly defending yourself. When this happens, you are in the way of your people getting any better. Now you need a new manager to start over. Maybe you should have just told them the truth: that their work is mediocre and not worthy of promotion.
Wrong decisions can be made by listening to the wrong people. In fact, I recall a friend of mine who asked me to join into an investment group a few years ago. I researched the person in charge and found that he had a criminal record was banned him from securities investing. Just a few months ago, he was arrested for heading up a ponzi scheme. I hope my friend made out OK and got out after I sent an email with a link to the criminal's past.
Not just anyone should be able to get to you. You must be selective of the voices you allow to speak to you. And as a manager, you had better be listening to the voices who have something to teach you - no matter what it costs. You, the manager, will be responsible to influencing the ears of others. I hope you've got your facts straight and only people in the know get your ear.
The truth is, most managers would be afraid that hiring someone who clearly outperforms them would be simply hiring their own replacement. And so, sadly, many really great people get passed over as "overqualified" because of a manager's own insecurities.
The truth is, a high-achiever might be just exactly what your organization needs - but here is the caveat - only if the Culture fit is right.
Hiring shouldn't always be the best person - but should be the best person for the company Culture. Having a highly-focused, customer-focused, high-achiever on staff might be just the ticket to get the rest of your people to build a new customer-focused Culture of high-performance.
But most times this doesn't happen because if a manager hasn't been able to build that Culture already, then he or she obviously doesn't know how to do it. That makes it unlikely that they could recognize good talent and Culture potential if it came along.
But nowhere is it written in the management handbook that a manager can not learn from an employee. Real good managers, employee-focused managers will do what is best for their employees and won't act out of fear of looking poorly or inept. But the moment you pass over a great potential employee because of insecurity is the moment you look incredibly inept.
Managers who welcome new employees on their first day then promptly hand them off to any employee because they have a meeting to run to, run the risk of doing two things:
You say you want to increase employee engagement and reduce employee turnover, yet you hand off a newbie to other staffers without a plan. What are you thinking?
Who is the employee with the best attitude, the best performance, the best engagement and the best intentions? That person is your new on-boarding mentor. Have a conversation with the potential mentor and tell them that because of their performance, you are placing new hires in their care to learn the correct way of doing things around here. Give your people positive responsibility and you will find that they rise to the occasion.
The first relationship that a new employee strikes up is usually the longest lasting relationship. Make sure your new hire gets mentored by the right attitude, the right work ethic, the right performance and the right engagement levels.
If you want to ensure the future Culture of your workplace is headed in the right direction, don't just willy-nilly leave new hires with your staffers. The first few days are important learning times for new employees - especially for improving Culture. Make this a strategic move. You will have made your own job much easier down the road.
Here are 3 ways to manage procrastination (taken from my new program, Tweak™ - the Future of Management):
What are your thoughts on procrastination? What has worked well for you? Leave me your comment below.
Playing for a bad coach can hurt motivation and the Culture of the team to the point that the players simply don't want to perform anymore. Hey, you've seen it in pro sports too.
Some coaches play to win - others play not to lose. Two very different philosophies that become readily evident in the performance of the team: one team offensively makes things happen regardless of what their opponent may be doing and the other team plays completely in defensive mode, their play dictated by what the other guys do.
Just like sports, the poor performance of an employee is a perfect reflection of the manager's ability to coach that employee to a better performance. Every employee can be coached but not every manager can (or will) coach. If you can't (or won't) coach, you, the manager, are in the way and are solely responsible for hurting the performance of your department. Don't blame your staff - they are working with no direction.
Oh, and trying to look superior isn't coaching. Come to think of it, it has absolutely nothing to do with management either.
Good managers know that the manager of the future (the future starts now) is a coach first, manager second. If you don't know much about coaching then you know little about managing. If you won't improve your game, why should your employees improve theirs? Lead by example.
No, the job of a manager is to coach, to inspire, to motivate them to spend a little time each day improving the little things that add up to big performance. A manager's job is to tweak performance.
Employees dislike being told constantly what they're doing wrong. Managers should already know that. So by knowing that, why is it that so many managers still spend so much time harping on employees about what they're doing wrong? Because there are a lot of managers out there that have no idea what they're doing. And up to now they have been able to hide it. But, they are about to be found out. And that single fact alone should scare most managers and organizations as a whole.
The truth is, employees want to be coached in the same way athletes are coached. Sports coaches spend time each day with their athletes fine tuning and adjusting their performance. Think for a second about how well a professional athlete would do on the sports field if all the coach ever did was harp on them for what they were doing wrong.
Get with the program managers: there's a new generation of worker that is expecting to be coached not crapped on. Your people don't want you to do the work for them, they want to offer suggestions as to how they can do the work for themselves. Your job as a coach is to find a way to uncover the little a-ha moments of your people that makes them want to be better, to get focused and to engage themselves in their work.
And if you as a manager don't think that you are able to act as a coach to your people because you're too busy, then you're in the way. Step aside and allow someone who can do the job to coach your people to the next level. Your people deserve better.
But back at the office, the truth sets in. The planning session was a waste of time because you had no intention of doing anything in the plan. You already knew in the back of your mind that to accomplish some of these items in your department you would need a herculean effort. You had no intention of doing your part. You simply figured out that it would be easier to just go along with everyone else at the meeting than to explain why it wouldn't work for your department.
In other words, you lied. And because there was no "accountability" mechanism built into the strategic plan, no one will really know until next year, when give your commitment to another plan you have no desire in implementing.
After all, you only have six more years until you can retire. Why embrace all this change and work so hard when you're this close to retirement. All you have to do is hang on through five more annual planning sessions and you're home free. Let the person repalcing you worry about it then.
Don't worry about suffocating your departmental Culture by not embracing new strategic directions. The job is all about you - not those who still have their whole work lives ahead of them. Nope, you just have to figure out a way to get out of embracing new technologies and practices. You're too close to pension to retire. No, you just keep developing your personal strategic plan of finding excuses for not embracing the corporate strategic plan.
By the time everyone catches on, you'll be out of there anyway - with your legacy of "do nothing" and non-accountability to remind your people of your ineffectiveness as a leader. Nope, your replacement will be as welcomed as a cool summer breeze. But you'll have your pension - and the embarrassment of your leadership abilities to keep you warm at night.
You are a manager. So manage. Don't hold court in your ivory tower. Don't separate yourself from the very people who are looking to you to do your job properly so they can do theirs. Manage.
There is a culture of entitlement that shows up in management that makes some believe that they, by virtue of their title, are above the other employees. If you believe that, then you probably suck as a manager. The only difference between you and one of your employees is that you have a greater responsibility to your people than they have to each other. They are depending on you to help them do their work more effectively. And you can't do that effectively from the boardroom hobnobbing with other managers or from your office.
You have an office - yes you do. But you should only be using it as a place to hang your coat and to place pictures of your kids. Your work needs to be done on the floor. You can handle your emails among your people on your Blackberry. Get away from your desk phone. There is no one else more important to talk to than the people who you work for (they don't work for you - you work for them - remember that).
Inspire, teach, motivate, mentor, compliment, correct, coach and empower. That's the job of the new manager. If you disagree, then you're in the way. Step aside.
That was a quote from a retail store manager yesterday after I attempted to understand the fine print when it came to the “Buy One Get One Half Off” promotion they were running.
I wasn’t upset. I wasn’t angry. I just wanted to understand why a simple promotion had been muddled with extra rules and regulations. Some items don’t qualify for half-off but do qualify for first full-priced item. It wasn’t clear, at least not to me so I asked to speak to a manager who I hoped would be able to explain it.
I had four items. The first item, if I would have overpaid by $10 would have qualified me to save $35 on the second item. The third item, if I would have been prepared to overpay by ten dollars again, would have saved me another $30 on the fourth item. So by overpaying by $20, I would have saved $65 – netting a $45 discount.
The manager saw the ridiculousness of how the promotion was structured and ended up discounting my second and fourth items anyway.
Speak up. It’s Filter-Free Fridays™. If it doesn’t make sense, say something. Not every promotion has been well thought out. Don’t assume they have. There are mediocre people working in every organization doing mediocre work and offering mediocre ideas. When you speak up and question them, it forces them to think things through and to get better at what they do. And you might end up saving or even making a little money in the process.
