Kitabı oxu: «Management»
Management
Secrets
The experts tell all!
Michael Heath
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Prepare to manage!
Manage yourself
1.1 Be a role model manager
1.2 Be the real thing
1.3 Look like you mean it
1.4 Go on – assert yourself!
1.5 Make time to manage
Empower your people
2.1 Manage with style
2.2 Know the ‘High Five’ that will motivate
2.3 Training is a chance to grow your own
2.4 Know how to coach
2.5 Keep on track with feedback
2.6 Let others share the load
2.7 Orchestrate a winning performance
2.8 Accentuate the positive in appraisals
2.9 Absence won’t make the heart grow fonder
2.10 Make discipline a quiet word
Make things happen
3.1 Make the decision to be decisive
3.2 Project plan, plan, plan
3.3 Object to unclear objectives
3.4 Identify meaningful milestones
3.5 Make your monitoring effective
3.6 Assign fair shares
3.7 Write reports that people want to read
Communicate in all directions
4.1 Manage up like you manage down
4.2 Turn on your feedback channel
4.3 Get to know yourself
4.4 Questions first – then listen up
4.5 Always be tactful
4.6 It’s great to collaborate
4.7 Be a culture vulture
4.8 Learn the language of body talk
4.9 Write emails with care
Recruit the very best
5.1 Know exactly what you’re looking for
5.2 Get ready to impress at interview
5.3 Save time with a telephone interview
5.4 Make great candidates want to join you
5.5 Avoid that fatal attraction
Build a great team
6.1 Define the team roles
6.2 Take your team on a journey
6.3 Fire up the team spirit
6.4 Build a supreme team
6.5 Communicate with a virtual team
6.6 Make time to meet
6.7 Produce an agenda
6.8 Turn yourself into a good chair
6.9 Open your meeting to all
6.10 Turn words into actions
Treat the budget with respect
7.1 Link in with the strategy
7.2 Understand your budget
7.3 Anticipate the future
7.4 Negotiate openly
Jargon buster
Further reading
About The Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prepare to manage!
You local bookshop is stuffed full of books claiming to help you manage better. So why add one more? Because I’ve done the job. And I’ve written it so that you get quick practical advice about the every day challenges I know you face. If you think academic theories are going to help – this ain’t the book.
As well as doing the job, I’ve spent the last 20 years or so working with other people also doing the job of management. Training them. Coaching them. Mentoring them. And believe me, that’s a lot of experience to dip into. I’ve seen the superstar managers – and the managers who would only get a star for being so bad at it. And what separates them? Simple – great managers prepare.
So I want you to prepare to make your management life easier. I want you to experience the thrill of knowing you manage your team well. And I want you to have a reputation as the sort of manager that people imitate. That people want to be like. That’s why I’m sharing these 50 secrets with you. You’ll find these secrets spread over seven chapters:
■ Manage yourself. You’ve got to have a clear sense of who you are before you manage others. Personal credibility is a big factor in a manager’s success.
■ Empower your people. People can be powerful – but only when the right management behaviours enable them to tap into that power. How you prepare for crucial interactions with others will determine your success.
■ Make things happen. A manager gets things done. Getting things done means applying the right tools and techniques that make sure the right things get done.
■ Communicate in all directions. Many don’t realise just how much skill a talented manager uses when they communicate. Not just to the team, but every key person they interact with.
■ Recruit the very best. You want a great candidate to say ‘yes’ to your job offer. A systematic approach to recruitment makes this a reality.
■ Build a great team. Great teams don’t happen by chance. A manager works carefully on the composition, skills and motivation of their employees. And they also turn team meetings into events that people look forward to.
■ Treat the budget with respect. Whether you’ve a budget or not, you will make crucial decisions that affect it. Understanding something of the process will help guide your decision making.
Time and again I’m going to talk about the need to prepare. Don’t short-change yourself on this. Thinking about and preparing for the management situations you face is often the deciding factor between the great manager and the mediocre.
Great managers anticipate and prepare while others merely react and repair.
Manage yourself
I love the saying, “That which I understand, I control. That which I don’t understand, controls me.” This chapter is about deepening the understanding you have of yourself and how you come across to your team. These secrets address subjects that many managers do not get right. So give the questions serious thought and decide how successfully you manage yourself. Then you’ll be ready to move on to managing others.
1.1 Be a role model manager
Role modelling starts when you’re a child, when you start to look around for someone to copy. As you get older you start to move your target. You want to be more like your friends, your heroes, your boss…
Guess what? There are people who want to be a manager like you. To do what you do. They watch you closely and even start dealing with stuff the way that you deal with stuff. Recognize it? You probably do it yourself. You’re either using approaches that your boss uses – or making sure you do the opposite!
■ What’s the great thing about role modelling? Role modelling is imitating the success we see because we want to be successful. Well,
case study At the start of my training career I delivered a workshop for my organization’s customer services staff. We covered the usual things, including how you pick the phone up to customers using a proper company greeting. A few days later I was surprised to find a delegate from the workshop picking up an incoming call with a casual “Hello.” I asked why he hadn’t used the professional greeting we agreed on the workshop. He pointed to his boss on the other side of the room and said, “As soon as he starts answering the phone properly, I’ll start answering the phone properly”.
“Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing” Albert Schweitzer, German-French philosopher
if you want your people to be enthusiastic, attentive to detail, great time managers, hard working, etc., then you have to be enthusiastic, attentive to detail, a great time manager…I’m sure you’ve got it.
■ The flip-side. You can’t ask your employees to do things you’re not prepared to do. Need people occasionally to work late? Then you need to be seen occasionally working late. Want them to meet your deadlines? Then keep your deadlines with them. Want people to show respect for each other in the team? Then you must show respect to everyone – inside or outside the team.
By demonstrating high performance behaviour, you’ll be challenging your employees to raise their game. You don’t have to say, “Be more like me”. They’ll soon pick up the message.
Demonstrate excellence and professionalism at all times.
1.2 Be the real thing
It doesn’t take long for people to spot a fraud. You’ve probably already spotted one or two at work yourself and already know how important it is to be authentic and honest with employees. But how do you build the real trust between manager and staff?
What your team wants from you is consistent behaviour. They need to see an underlying logic to your decision making. They need to feel that you are always fair – even if they don’t like a decision.
This consistency always comes from a stable character. But what is character? Character is usually a combination of the qualities that make up an individual. Some qualities can be attributes such as ‘determined’, ‘persevering’ or ‘enthusiastic’. Other qualities are more to do with your moral code: ‘honesty’, ‘integrity’, ‘fairness’.
case study A recently promoted manager called me to ask for advice. “The trouble is I don’t do small talk, Michael. I know that managers should, but it’s just not what I’m good at.” “Then let them know” I suggested. “Sit them down and tell them what your strengths are. Then tell them what you don’t do.
They’ll understand.” And they did. I also think they appreciated her honesty. She started off being truthful from the start. She avoided pretending to show a quality that she didn’t really have. But she showed a great quality that she did have: always wanting to be honest with her team.
Now do the following exercise:
1 Identify your character traits. Take a sheet of paper and write all of the qualities you believe you have. Try to identify at least 10 to 15 traits.
2 Agree the traits. Show these traits to someone who knows you well. A partner, friend or colleague who will give an honest opinion.
3 Mentally ‘sign up’ to these character traits. Make a pact with yourself that this is the ‘real you’ and the behaviour you will always try to demonstrate.
4 Keep these traits with you. Put the list in a discreet place where you can quickly find it.
5 Use this list of character traits for your tough decisions. Next time you have a tough thing to do, make sure that it reflects the character traits you signed up to.
Your employees may question your decisions but should never have cause to question your character.
1.3 Look like you mean it
Managers seldom talk about their ‘image’ but let’s be clear: you have one. The way you dress provides visual clues to the sort of person you are. Casual dress may be cool, but smart casual is coolest of all. Think about it. You don’t deliver thousand-dollar messages in one-dollar suits.
Perhaps you think I might be overestimating the impact of your appearance? Then let me point you to the election race between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy in 1960. People still say the reason JFK won was because Nixon hadn’t bothered to shave. The people in makeup couldn’t hide his 5 o’clock shadow. You don’t win trust looking like a gangster.
one minute wonder Look around for someone else in your organization who always manages their image well. How do they do it? What are the ways that they make sure they look the part? What can you learn from them and introduce as part of your own appearance?
“Most things are judged by their jackets”
Baltasar Gracián y Morales, 17th-century Spanish writer
■ So what does smart dress do? It neutralizes people’s opinion of you. Instead of concentrating on your ill-fitting trousers or joke tie they concentrate on you and your message. When you dress professionally, then people assume you are a professional. You look the part.
■ Image doesn’t stop with clothes. Looking well groomed equally sends positive messages out about you. It tells people you care about the small stuff and that detail matters. So if you travel in a car, make sure it’s tidy. When you open your briefcase, don’t lift the lid on a mass of papers and clutter. If your cell phone or mobile rings, don’t have a ringtone that’s so awful people make remarks about it.
■ Last of all, what about your desk? You must make sure that you look like you have everything under control. Remember, a manager’s job is often about managing detail. An untidy desk sends out the wrong messages to your staff and colleagues.
All managers sell. We sell ideas, opinions and concepts. But, as any salesperson will tell you, people buy people. How you look either helps – or gets in the way of – that process.
Like it or not, people are going to judge you on your appearance.
1.4 Go on – assert yourself!
Being the boss doesn’t mean being bossy. It means dealing with difficult situations fairly and skilfully. Aggression may get quick results, but you soon lose respect and loyalty. Asserting yourself is different. It’s about getting your point across but keeping people with you. Being strong – but always being fair.
■ You are going to have to deal with conflict. It’s part of what we managers do. But you can still say what you want to say and keep the respect others have for you. How? By making sure that you show respect to others.
■ There’s a big difference between aggressive and assertive managers. Aggressive managers make their point – but in a way that ignores the rights and feelings of the person they are talking to. The
case study Two colleagues, Dev and Suki, argued and ended up not speaking to each other. Both complained separately to the manager and demanded that she deal with the situation. Unfortunately, the manager decided that they were “two adults and should sort it out between themselves”.
But over the next few months the situation just got worse. What was the result? Not only did both Dev and Suki eventually leave, but two other colleagues left as well, fed up with the bad atmosphere! Because the manager was afraid to deal properly with the situation, things got much worse.
“He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty” Lao Tzu, Taoist philosopher of ancient China
person then feels hurt and resents the manager. Worst of all, they may even show this through sabotage and non-co-operation. An assertive manager can make the same point – but makes sure that they respect the rights of who they are speaking to.
Let me show you. I could have a disagreement and say, “You don’t know what you’re talking about”. Notice how this not only passes judgement on the message, it passes judgement on the person as well. How much better this might be if I said, “I’d like to talk about where we disagree”. This time I’m concentrating on the facts, not the person. This is why assertive people are so strong – they have a need to get at the truth, but make sure they don’t make enemies when they do so.
Dealing assertively with conflict is an important skill every successful manager must master.
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