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Author Archives: Tom Foster
Identify Management Potential
Succession is not just when the CEO decides to retire to Florida. Succession happens all the time, all over the organization. Technicians become team leaders, team leaders become supervisors, supervisors become managers and managers become executive managers.
And, we are all getting older. How old will you be in five years? It’s a simple math problem, but the answer can be surprising.
We look for those team members who have matured and are ready to step up. Or do we? Most times, we wait until there is an open position and we scramble.
Often, we put together a leadership program to teach identified management skills. Should it be a matter of teaching management skills, or rather, putting people in position to identify their management potential.
I did not say give them a promotion, a raise or the corner office, because if you did that, and they failed, you would have a chocolate mess on your hands. You test people with project work.
The First Step is Not a Step
How to start? What to do before you start?
The first step is a mental state. How you get there is up to you. Before you start, your mind is wandering, aimlessly, subject to the whims of where you are, the circumstances in which you find yourself. The first step is to break the pattern, break the pattern of your mental state.
Some do it with meditation. Some do it with a mental exercise. Some do it with a physical sensation, as simple as rubbing two fingers together. Basic Assumption Mental State is a phrase coined by Wilfred Bion, made understandable by Pat Murray (BAMS).
It’s just a shift
How do you shift the mental state of a group? Focus each member on a common question. It could be as simple as a common experience, an understanding of purpose (Why are we here?), thoughts about mission (When we are finished, what does life look like?) or even just some Good News (tell us something positive that happened in the last two weeks).
Create a positive mental state. Now, you are ready to proceed to the first (next) step.
What is Your Intention?
It’s January, annual reflection time. What are your intentions for the year?
More important than the ideas of your intentions, how will you make them more effective as guideposts, milestones, motivation and internal encouragement?
What is the form of your intentions? Like New Year’s resolutions that are forgotten, intentions can easily fade.
- Define your intentions in written form.
- Read your intentions out loud, in private.
- Say your intentions out loud, in front of a group of people.
- Give that group permission to hold you accountable.
- Post your intention somewhere public, where you see it every day, where others see it every day.
You can start with a 3×5 card taped to your mirror.
Merry Christmas
Originally published December 23, 2005.
As Matthew looked across the manufacturing floor, the machines stood silent, the shipping dock was clear. Outside, the service vans were neatly parked in a row. Though he was the solitary figure, Matthew shouted across the empty space.
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.”
He reached for the switch and the lights went dark. He slid out the door and locked it behind.
—
We hope you all have a wonderful holiday. Management Blog will return on January 4, 2021. We will check email over the holidays, so if you need us, you know how to get us.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
-Tom
We Didn’t Have to Wait
Many people see 2020 as a year to (un)remember. Lives disrupted.
A new year is upon us, and with it, a new outlook. Is it a New Year’s resolution? Is it the promise of the vaccine(s)? Is it new habits that help us cope?
We didn’t have to wait. A new outlook can be adopted on any day. It’s a shift. Most people don’t shift until they have to, until they are pushed to. But, the shift isn’t required. The shift is a choice.
Supernatural Powers
“Who is responsible for the team?” I asked again. “Who is responsible for the performance of the team, and all the things that affect performance?”
Melanie started looking around her office, as if someone was going to appear. One of her team just quit.
I continued. “If it’s not you, as the department manager, if it’s not your accountability, then who?”
Melanie’s eyes stopped skirting the room. There was no hero that appeared. One last time, she floated her excuse, “But how am I responsible for one of my supervisors quitting?”
“That’s a very good question. How are you, as the manager, responsible for one of your supervisors quitting?”
“What, am I supposed to be clairvoyant?” Melanie snapped.
“That would be helpful,” I nodded. “But let’s say you don’t have supernatural powers. How could you, as the manager, know enough about your supervisors, to have predicted this departure?”
Getting Consensus?
Adelle emerged from the conference room after two long hours of debate. She shook her head from side to side, a genuine look of despair. “I tried,” she shrugged, “but we didn’t make a whole lot of progress. What we ended up with was mostly crap.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Oh, we have been trying to figure out the best way to solve this problem and there are a bunch of ideas, but we just can’t reach a consensus on which way to proceed. I am afraid to get started until I know for sure that everyone is on board. But every time we make a compromise, other people drop off and want something different.”
“What happens to the quality of the solution every time you compromise?”
“That’s the real problem. It’s the compromising that kills it. After listening to all the input, I know what we should do and the little compromises just water it down. We might as well junk the whole project because, in this state, it will not do what the customer wants it to do.”
“Whose meeting did you just walked out of?” I asked.
It was Adelle’s turn to ask, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, was it the team’s meeting, or was it your meeting? Let me put it a different way. Who is your boss going to hold accountable for this decision?”
“Oh, I tried that once, blaming a decision on the team. I got the message. My boss is going to hold me accountable for the decision.”
“Then, it wasn’t a team meeting. It was YOUR meeting that the team got invited to. It is your responsibility to listen to the input, and it is also your responsibility to make the decision. And you don’t need agreement, you just need support.”
Adelle had to sit down to think about this one.
Managing Conflict?
This meeting was different. Business as usual was shattered like crystal on a marble floor. The usual comfort level was suddenly traded for a stomach flipping tension-filled discussion.
“I am sorry, but I have to disagree.” The silence dropped, eyes got wide, butts in chairs started shifting. Someone cleared their throat. This team was at a cross roads. The next few minutes would determine whether it engaged in productive work or disengaged to avoid the conflict currently on the table.
This is not a question of managing conflict, more a matter of managing agreement. In fact, the more the group tries to manage the conflict, the more likely the agreement will be coerced and compromised with the real issues suppressed, perhaps even undiscussable.
Conversely, if the group engaged in a process to manage agreement, the conflict might be heard, even encouraged, thoroughly discussed. Opposing viewpoints might be charted out and debated. Expectations might be described at both maximum success and dismal failure. Indicators could be created with contingency plans for positive and negative scenarios.
Does your team manage conflict to make sure discussions are comfortable and efficient?
OR…
Does your team encourage spirited discussion of both sides of an issue? When things get uncomfortable, can your team live through the stress of conflict to arrive at a well argued decision?
When I look around the room and see that each person is comfortably sitting, I can bet the issue on the table is of little importance. But, if I see stomachs tied in knots, this issue on the table is likely to be important.
Heightened Intuition
Remember the bio-feedback days. It was all the rage, an entire arm of the psychology, self-help, medical community started a little cottage industry. I don’t know where it started, maybe with the old lie-detector machines that measured Galvanic skin response. The essence of the science was that various stimuli in the environment create predictable biological responses in the body, sparking electrical and chemical changes in brain patterns and hormone levels. It’s what gives you the sweats when you get nervous.
You don’t hear much about bio-feedback anymore, but the bio-responses in your body are still very real. As a Manager, these bio-responses can work for you and against you. For the most part, bio-response is unconscious, we don’t know what is going on inside, but the hormones are being released nonetheless. As brain patterns change or hormone levels build, if the Manager can become sensitive to the change, two very important things can occur.
- Heightened intuition
- Channeled reaction
Charlie was in my office yesterday. We were talking about mostly nothing for a half a minute, when I suddenly became uncomfortable. Something happened inside of me, mostly with my stomach. I wasn’t in discomfort, but there was a significant twinge. Some people believe that intuition is unexplainable, but I think intuition is simply getting in touch with the bio-responses that unconsciously occur all the time.
The twinge in my stomach was caused by a short silence, a white space in the conversation. I had asked a question about Charlie’s last meeting with his boss. There was no response from Charlie. Silence in a conversation often causes a momentary awkwardness, which is a bio-response to “I don’t know where this conversation is going next? I thought I knew, but I don’t know now. I wish I knew, but I still don’t know. I hope this conversation get some direction soon, because this awful silence is killing me.” BOOM. That’s the bio-response. Heightened intuition (simply getting in touch with the bio-response) tells me that we are talking about something more significant than the weather. The first important element of bio-response is heightened intuition.
The second is channeled reaction. The automatic (unconscious) reaction to a bio-response is to avoid. Do anything to make this feeling go away. The silence was awkward. The automatic (unconscious) response is simply to “talk.” Make the silence go away. If I talk, the silence will be gone, the awkwardness will be gone and I won’t feel this way. It is also likely that the conversation will steer back to a discussion of the weather.
Channel the reaction. When the Manager becomes aware of the bio-response, the reaction can be channeled productively. My bio-response to Charlie was a twinge in the stomach. The twinge told me that this conversation had potential to be more meaningful. I could avoid it or I could engage. Avoiding it would be easy, simply talk to fill the silence, talk about anything. OR, I could engage, and channel the reaction. I could let the silence continue. I could let the silence do the heavy lifting to move this conversation to the next level. Something significant had happened between Charlie and his boss and Charlie needed to talk about it. We could have talked about sports, or we could have engaged in a meaningful discussion that had real impact on Charlie.
The bio-response gives the Manager a heightened sense of intuition and the possibility to channel the reaction to a more productive outcome. Listen to the twinges, watch for white space in conversations.