Management

The first step is managing yourself. This includes obvious areas like staying in shape, eating and sleeping well; being accountable for your actions; doing your best; being a good listener; and other concepts discussed in this book. As a manager, you’ll be leading by example, and you will set the tone for your entire department. Your responsibilities include motivating your team members to do the best work possible and shaping the team into a cohesive unit that gets the job done.

So you’ll want to set a standard for personal excellence, whether it be through taking additional training; learning new skills; and being positive. The latter is especially important in obtaining cooperation from employees, who must feel that you are loyal and that they can trust you.

In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.

Work-hard, play-hard culture.
Tough-guy macho culture.
Process culture.
Bet-the-company culture.

An autocratic manager makes all the decisions, keeping the information and decision-making among the senior management.
A paternalistic manager makes decision in an authoritarian manner in what he or she perceives is in the best interests of the employees.
A democratic manager allows the employees to participate in decision-making; everything is determined by the majority.
A laissez-faire manager takes a peripheral role, allowing staff members to manage their own arenas of responsibility.

To engage in work that is interesting and provides a sense of accomplishment
To feel that the job offers economic stability
To grow toward personal potential

My employees expect me to:

Know what they want, even if they don’t say anything.
Understand that they have lives away from work that sometimes interfere with work.
Pick up the slack for them or intercede in some way when they aren’t able to get their assigned job tasks completed on time.
Be available at any time of the day to answer questions and resolve problems.
Treat them fairly, which they define as considering any and all extenuating circumstances before passing judgment or taking action.
Help them acquire new skills, even if that means they will then become qualified for different jobs.
Advocate for them when they have needs that require upper management decisions.
Occasionally take them to lunch or bring in goodies as a show of appreciation for the good work they do.
Give them full credit for the department’s successes and take full blame for the department’s shortcomings.
Always remember that they are only human but to never reveal this about myself.

An effective coach does a lot of things:

Provide timely and specific feedback. “Good job!” feels good but says little; “You really nailed the point in your proposal!” lets an employee know what was good.
Establishes standards and goals that are high enough to make employees stretch, but not so high that they’re impossible to reach.
Tells the truth with kindness and caring — but still tells the truth.
Shares ideas and offers suggestions but resists telling employees how to do things.
Teaches people how to cook rather than taking them out to dinner, metaphorically speaking.
Helps people look at problems from a new vantage point so that they may understand challenges within the context of the entire company and not just their part of it.
Holds employees accountable for their commitments and goals.

While knowledge can be learned, wisdom must be acquired. Knowing is having the right words; wisdom is knowing when and how to say them — and when to keep them to yourself.

A teacher is someone with expert skills and knowledge who has the ability to share this expertise with others. It isn’t always easy for a teacher-manager to find a between “Let me show you” and “Get out of the way, I’ll do this myself!”

Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

Mediation is most effective (and successful) when it is a process of collaboration rather than compromise. “Collaboration” comes from the the Latin word meaning “to labor together.” “Compromise” implies giving up something of value, or conceding a cherished point, to reach agreement. These implications are important because they set the tone for the discussion. Few people are happy when compromise means they get less than they hoped for or expected, yet most are pleasantly surprised to get more.

People worry about their jobs and their abilities to complete new tasks and assignments. They need someone (you) to rally them back to believing in themselves. As a manager, a major part of your job is to motivate and excite your employees.

But they players know that the cheerleaders are always there. And they know that even when the crowd boos, the cheerleaders are still there, cheering.

Not all people, no matter how creative, function well in an environment with minimal structure. Some people don’t know how to channel their energy into productive tasks with measurable outcomes. Other people crave — and excel under — close and specific direction.

They handle complex projects by breaking them into smaller, logical steps. Structured people often keep status and progress logs of their projects.
They appear disciplined and goal-oriented.
They seldom knowingly break rules, and they might take offense with those who do.

The backbone of structure is clear communication. Employees need to know what they are expected to do and by when. What is more important? What is less important? What happens when tasks compete for people, time, and resources? Some people are good at establishing priorities, while others struggle. Sometimes employees have trouble prioritizing because they are unfamiliar with the department, the company, or the industry. They have no context for the work they do, so they don’t know what to tackle first. Everything becomes critical in such an environment. As a consequence what gets completed is often frustratingly trivial, and the important stuff gets left undone or is missed completely.

Start by laying out specific tasks and the small goals that must be accomplished by the end of the day. Be sure the employee has the necessary tools to complete the tasks and knows how to use them. Next, identify common problems that might arise, and establish a procedure for dealing with them. Some employees find it useful to have a chart or diagram that outlines priorities and procedures, while others might just take notes.

Though the last thing Larisse wanted was yet another set of rules, she finally felt compelled to ask her superiors for a more comprehensive policy.

Consistency is crucial not only because it establishes standardized procedures but because it also affirms fairness. Even if employees (or managers) disagree with the HR policies or department procedures, they will accept them when they know everyone else must, too.

Too many people view listening as a passive act when it’s actually just as active as talking. The problem is what we tend to spend listening time thinking about what we’re going to say next. Or our mind wander and we begin to think about anything but what the other person is saying.

Words are only a small percentage of the typical communication process — just 7%, in fact. Body language and nonverbal cues account for 55%, while 38% is the tone of voice. Dialogue that takes place over the phone is missing over half of the content of typical communication.

Engage your mind to slow down your brain. Let it hear every word as if it were a delightful chocolate that you want to savor until it melts away.
Beware of the familiarity trap. As soon as the words begin to sound familiar, the search for new information ends. “I’ve heard this before!” your mind says, and it turns its attention elsewhere.
Don’t cross the line from anticipation to assumption.
Don’t formulate your response or mentally argue while the other person is still speaking.

To be productive, team members need to know why they’re working.

Lastly, effective teams receive appropriate external support. Even the most self-sufficient, effective work teams can’t function in a vacuum. They need you and your superiors, and sometimes other departments or work groups, to provide the resources required to achieve their goals. It’s your role as manager to be sure all of these elements are in place.

We hope that when things go well you share the glory (along with any tangible rewards) with those who did the work. We also hope that when things turn out not so well, you have the fortitude to suck it up and take the hit. This is why you get paid the big bucks. Accountability summarizes the concept of “the buck stops here.”

The common perception is that accountability is related to negative consequences, the fallout from circumstances that go awry. But accountability also encompasses the positive consequences. When a project comes through and accomplishes its objectives, as its manager you are the first and most prominent to receive accolades.

He felt important, he acted important, and most of the time, he rushed around looking important. Now that he had a real office, he closed the door whenever he was in it.

With no bond to him, people in the group short-circuited him. They failed to rally around projects. They fulfilled their responsibilities, but they did only what they had to do and nothing more.

Ask each employee one question related to a personal interest. Yes, this might required you to do a little research. Careful listening can help you to build a mental “information file” about each employee. the general question, “How was your weekend?” can elicit an astonishing breadth and depth of information.

Don’t let the process of writing intimidate you. It’s just another form of communication. The best way to begin writing is to start with what’s on your mind. Keep in mind that you don’t have to start at the beginning. You can rearrange your blocks of words after you get them down on paper (or on screen). Writing is a process of editing and revising. If you don’t like the way something sounds, change it.

Your company entrusts you with its most valuable resource — employees. It expects you to help your employees develop their skills and careers.

The harsh reality in the business world is that companies have to make a profit. Businesses must balance profitability, customer or client satisfaction, and quality products or service.

Creative types can often be characterized as follows:

They appear to have little regard for authority, rules, structure, and routine, viewing these as elements of the work world that do not apply to them.
They establish surroundings within their work environments that support and feed their imaginations.
They have unorthodox or eccentric methods for stimulating their productivity.
They appear disorganized and seem to “fly by the seat of their pants” when giving presentations.
They find humor in, and even make fun of, just about everything.
They work in spurts of intensity that can last for hours, days, or even weeks, then go into a “down” phase, when they appear to accomplish very little.
They arrive late or even fail to show up for staff or other general meetings that don’t apply directly to their projects.

Despite appearances to the contrary, most creative people are highly organized. It’s just that the organization doesn’t necessarily take the form of neatly labeled files and calendars that record meetings and commitments — the standard trappings of structure. Those “seat of the pants” presentations often reflect not lack of preparation but instead a deeply assimilated knowledge of the topic acquired through intense and often extended research or observation — sometimes with a dash of intuition thrown in. This less tangible style of organization can have the appearances of chaos, but it’s not. For the creative individual, it’s as close to logical as it gets.

Often favoritism exists as a form of office politics, with employees jockeying for position in the kiss-my-shoes line.

The solution to effective time management lies in your attitude. People who admit they have difficulty with time management will be 90% closer to solving the problem when they take responsibility for their own action. There are only so many hours a day, and it’s up to you how to spend them — either doing the work that’s supposed to be done or letting interruptions and other distractions take time away from what you need to do. No improvement is likely, however, unless you recognize that the only person who can positively change anything on this score is you.

It is very difficult to change the habits and practices of others. So ask yourself what you do (or don’t do) that contributes to the problem. And how you, personally, can change the situation.

This is where Newton’s first law of motion comes in. The law states: “Every body continues in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external impressed force.”

Set criteria before thinking about the options.

Think about a recent decision and how you went about making it. You probably started by weighing various options and then comparing them to decide which one best suited your purposes. Although this method can be effective, unbeknownst to you your decision may have been biased.

Most people look at the benefits of available options when trying to make a decision. Some, however, seem to feel that considering the risks introduces a negative note to the proceedings. Consequently, the risks receive little, if any, attention. In some work environments people find that suggesting risks is unacceptable, so they keep quiet about them.

At the other opposite end of the spectrum are those who only opt for “safe” decisions, that is, those that seem to carry minimum risk.

If you ask most people how they make decisions, they will usually say something like: “I weigh up the benefits of the options, do the same with the snags, then choose.”

If everyone uses the same decision-making processes, then why do we differ so much in our choices?

When weighing up benefits versus snags, people seem to err toward one side or the other. Someone with a “glass half empty” (pessimistic) standpoint will see the snags as more significant than the benefits.

Making the decision itself is often one of the hardest moments a manager can face. Some people are prepared to take risks that accompany decision-making, others are not. However, one question all managers ask is: “Do I have all the information I need?”

When a decision is needed, failure to decide can be a far bigger problem than making a wrong decision. “Not to decide is to decide.”

There are people who would give each issue detailed consideration, but most of us simply react immediately to these everyday requests and use a “gut feeling” to make a decision. In other words, your decision seems naturally right at the time.

What are the main criteria?
What are the main risks on both options?

Certain people mentally screen out ideas by considering the criteria too early. For example, “I have this idea but the cost would probably be too high, so I won’t suggest it.” Consequently a potentially useful solution has been lost. Why, then, is it potentially useful even if it’s too expensive? After all, someone might suggest a way of reducing the cost of this solution while retaining the chief benefit. But this cannot be done if the idea is never suggested.

Do not set (or even discuss) any criteria before or during a brainstorming session whose purpose is to generate options. At this stage the objective is quantity, rather than quality, of ideas.

The act of delegation must be separated from simply issuing work. Issuing work means deciding which member of the team should carry out some task that is part of their normal role anyway. Delegation, on the other hand, involves giving someone a task that is normally part of the manager’s job.

In this context, authority is defined as the power to make independent decisions. Failure to delegate effectively probably stems from fear.

Allow team member to make independent decisions within certain limitations. Setting limits will help avoid disasters.

Decide whether their method would achieve the objective. If it will work (even though it may differ from your approach), let them do it their way, because they will be more committed to their course of action.

She will likely come up with the same points you would have, but now it’s her brainchild, not your interference.

Delegation at first can be rather like learning how to drive: horrible crunching of gears, stalling at traffic lights, forgetting to signal occasionally, and maybe even a few near-misses. Gradually the learner becomes proficient and more skilled and experienced, and the problems fade away.

Employees represent a significant investment on the part of companies. Though the media makes it sound like employees who mess up or hit a trouble spot are immediately fired, most companies are more interested in trying to resolve the situation to protect their investment.

Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.

Sometimes inappropriate behavior at work reflects problems outside the workplace, such as at home.

Employees expect managers to “protect” them, to watch out for their interests and to be involved enough to understand the personalities in the group and put protections in place to assure that equality is maintained. When this doesn’t happen, employees grow resentful and frustrated. Morale slides, taking productivity with it. Sometimes the issues that drive employees away seem minor, yet they reflect an underlying problem with trust and betrayal.

Most manipulators learn their behavior patterns early in life, and they receive reinforcement each time they use them with success. They tend to shift to manipulator mode when conventional effort fails to produce the desired results. Manipulative behaviors target people rather than processes and present generalities rather than specifics. They may include threats, demands, insults, and efforts to make you feel guilty. Manipulation may also take the forms of compliments, kindnesses, treats, and other attempts to be ingratiating.

Anger as manipulation.

Anger is sometimes a presentation of manipulation. Most of us are so uncomfortable around anger that we’ll do just about anything to stop it. Manipulators know this, so anger often becomes a staple in their behavior arsenals.

People lose it sometimes. Little things add up, tensions and frustrations build. People feel powerless to control or change situations that they believe should be different that persist because you (or someone else or another department or the company) intentionally created the circumstances. Whether there is truth to this perception doesn’t matter; perceptions are reality as viewed through the ever-changing hues of emotions.

Anger is an unmistakable sign that a person has exceeded his or her tolerance for a situation or behavior. It is an intense and powerful blend of emotion and action that often frightens even the person who is angry. Anger tends to feed on itself. The longer the shouting continues, the more volatile the anger becomes. Such meetings can quickly devolve into shouting matches, so it’s crucial to defuse anger quickly. These steps can help you regain control:

Intercede immediately.
Remove the audience.
Separate the behavior from the person, and request that the behavior change immediately.
Be an active listener.
Ask what solutions the employee would like to see.
Reiterate any agreements, and establish a plan to follow up.

Someone who loses control in front of others often feels compelled to maintain or escalate angry behaviors. Removing the audience gives the angry person the freedom to back down without losing face and to regain composure.

Another dilemma occurs when a manager is chairing a meeting and also has to be a leading contributor to one or more agenda items. As a contributor, the need is to input or discuss information whereas, as chairperson, the role is to control the input and ensure that it is relevant to the objectives.

Almost everyone at some time or other has had to sit through an ill-prepared presentation: unclear objectives, no real structure, poor or inappropriate visual aids, rambling delivery, no sense of what the audience wants, running out of time… Before you know it, you’ve tuned out and are surreptitiously checking your smartphone for texts.

A basic failing in too many presentations is that the audience has no idea what to expect. They are never told why the presentation is being given, what will be covered, or how long it will take.

The memo should clearly but briefly state the following:

The problem
The agreed-upon or determined solution
The tasks involved in implementing the solution
Who is responsible for each task
The timeline for completing the tasks
The method for measuring the solution’s success

Regular communication — daily or at least weekly — is the most effective way to both monitor and shape employee performance. It remains your most effective tool as a manager. Don’t save things, good or bad, for a formal evaluation meeting. Nothing you or the employee says in a formal meeting should come as a surprise to either one of you.

For many managers, evaluating an employee’s performance is not nearly as difficult as sharing that evaluation with the person. No matter how objective you are, there are emotions attached. People like to hear good things about themselves, and sometimes hearing about the need to improve sounds like criticism. The way you present your comments goes a long way toward shaping the employee’s perception of his or her performance as well as feelings about what you say.

Again, nothing you say in a performance appraisal meeting should come as a surprise to the employee — good or not so good. As manager, you should have ongoing interactions with employees that keep you and them aware of any performance deficiencies.

You are not a therapist; you are a manager. You cannot address psychological problems, even if you know enough to see that they are present. Your role is to say to this employee, “There are problems with your performance that we need to discuss.”

But that’s not your role. Playing therapist (or even friend) can land you and your company in legal hot water. It’s a delicate balance indeed, and one that can tip out of control before you know it.

Before you commit your thoughts to writing, consider how your words might sound a few months or years from now, coming form a lawyer’s mouth. Be sure your comments are factual and maintain the same tangible focus as your meeting. Laws vary among states, but in many the courts can subpoena any written materials you keep — including notes intended only for your use.

Naturally, you can’t wait to share your excitement with your coworker friends. They’re likely proud of you, too. After all, your promotion is real-life proof that they, too, have a shot at moving up the ladder. You represent possibilities and potential. But they are not your coworker anymore. And whether they remain your friends depends on numerous variables including whether you’ve moved up and out or just up, meaning that your former coworkers now report to you.

The US military has long prohibited fraternization across rank, such as between officers and enlisted personnel. Though interaction and even closeness among unit members are essential for top performance, the military perspective is that familiarity undermines authority and the performance of duties. The military expects — and demands — that all personnel respect rank, the military management structure.

The transition from peer to superior is seldom smooth. Your former colleagues, now your subordinates, feel resentment toward you when you give them job assignment and evaluate their performance.

We get angry when we feel afraid, sad, threatened, insecure, disappointed — when things are out of our control. Anger elicits a response when other efforts fail to do so, which can give a false sense of control. Anger is uncomfortable for others to experience, so they often do whatever it takes to put an end to their discomfort — which often means placating the angry person by giving what the person wants.

For most people, the expression of anger represents the culmination of feelings they can no longer control. However, the actual event that sends them over the edge is often something minor that might not even be related to the reasons they’re angry. The challenge for you as the manager is to identify and expose the underlying issues.

Because you know you have to go to work and deal with all the pressures there, you try to stay calm and collected at home so you can at least leave with the delusion of peace and harmony. But when you get to work, an employee says or does something that triggers those feelings you’ve swallowed, and back up they rush. Before you know it, you’re dumping all over this employee whose only offense was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time saying the wrong thing.

Most people feel the greatest amount of stress when they’re working hard or long hours and feeling that they’re not getting anything in return for their efforts and sacrifices. For some people this recognition is in terms of money, though more often it is actual recognition that they feel is lacking. Money loses much of its charm after a while, but praise for work well done lives in memory for a long, long time.

Try not to say things you’ll regret or have to apologize for later. The “count to 10” rule comes in handy in times of stress.

Some managers feel such a need for their employees to like them that they gossip with them, even badmouthing the company or its leaders. While this may seem harmless on the surface, these actions ultimately end up costing managers from both sides.

She explicitly said she did not want to hear names and personal stories. This freed the employees to focus on workflow, assignments, goals, priorities, and other issues related to productivity rather than personality.

It’s easy to turn the last manager into a bad guy, regardless of whether that was actually the case. Human nature causes us to want to look as good as we can; sometimes this tendency (rooted in insecurity) leads us astray. You might be tempted to think that by making someone else look bad, you can at least look better — if not downright good. Resist!

One-third of job candidates lie about their experience, education, or employment history on their resumes.

Likewise, don’t imply that you’re not hiring this person, either. No deal is a done deal until the hired candidate shows up for work. It’s worth your while to remain open and positive with candidates who come in second or third.

In this meeting, it is not necessary or advisable to invite the employee’s comments or perspective. The time for that is long past. If you’ve done your job as a manager, the firing shouldn’t come as a total shock to the employee. You’ve counseled the employee about his or her performance issues or whatever problems have led to this point, and you’ve given the employee plenty of opportunities to fix the problems. Keep your cool and stick with the script you’ve rehearsed. If it is necessary for someone to escort the fired employee from the premises, be sure that person is ready and waiting.

As soon as possible after the terminated employee has gone, assemble the other members of the team to give them the news. Keep the reasons for the employee’s termination to yourself; such information is confidential. It’s important to treat people with respect after they’ve been fired, regardless of the reasons for firing them.