From the Ask Tom mailbag.

Question:

I’m going to be promoted in July as a manager and I will have to manage 5 people who are older and more experienced than me. I have been working with 2 of them for a year and 2 of them are new to the company, the last person has no experience. My boss knows that is going to be a real challenge for me, he is promoting me because I have the technical ability to do the job. I need to work on my soft skills. I have developed strong analytical skills which are not always an asset to manage a team effectively. Do you have any advice?

Response:

Age and maturity is always a problem for a younger manager working with older team members. You will have to earn their respect and you will not be given much room for error.

Here is the principle I follow.

Every member of an organization, in their pursuit of doing a good job, will always seek out the person who brings value to their thinking and their work.

Wouldn’t it be great if that person was the manager? Often, it’s not, and that is where the trouble begins. My advice to any manager who wants to be successful is very simple.

Bring value to the thinking and the work of your team members.

That’s it. I will let you think about that for a day, while I open this up for comments from the rest of you. What is that you can do, as a manager, to bring value to the thinking and work of your team members? -TF

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Charlie. “You are going to lose eight hours of production today.” The plan was to rotate eight operators off-line for one hour each. In that one hour, Charlie was going to coach the operator to perform data entry in real-time with a customer on the line. The current method was to take notes on paper and, later, enter the order into the computer. It was a delayed process that created mistakes and missing information.

Charlie was coaching the operators, I was coaching Charlie. Actually, I was training Charlie. Our first subject was Sonja.

“Good morning, Sonja,” I took the lead. “You have completed the training for the real-time data entry and then we throw you back on-line with real customers. I don’t know if that is fair, so today, we have you off-line for an hour. We will do the same work, but the customer won’t be real. In fact, I am going to be your customer, so if you need to stop and slow down, all you have to do is smile and we will slow down.

“Since, I am the customer, Charlie will be your coach. Every time Charlie sees something he really likes, he is going to stop you and tell you about the element you did well. Ready?” Sonja smiled.

“You smiled,” I said. “So, let’s take it slow. You have your phone script, let’s start at the top.”

Sonja started through the script. Twenty seconds in, I stopped her.

“Charlie, we just finished the first few seconds of the call. What were the elements that Sonja did well?” Charlie stared at me, intently. Though I had briefed him before we got started, he was still focusing on mistakes. In the first twenty seconds, Sonja had made no mistakes, so Charlie didn’t know what to say.

“Charlie, in the first few seconds, did Sonja stick exactly to the script?” Charlie nodded. “Then, tell Sonja what positive element she accomplished by sticking to the script.”

So, Charlie talked about consistency. And we went on, stopping every few seconds, so Charlie could make a positive comment about Sonja’s performance. The first call took 15 minutes. The second call took 12 minutes. The third took 8 minutes. The fourth took 7. Then 6 minutes. The last two calls hit our target at 4 minutes, and then we had coffee. -TF

“Look, Mr. Foster. We have a certain amount of work that has to be done around here and I can’t just sit by and watch these guys go so slow. They just don’t get it. I have been working with them for eight months.” Charlie stopped. He shook his head. He had been trying to get his telephone operators to go paperless. It wasn’t working.

“Did you know that you are a really good phone operator?” I asked.

“I know. I did it for six years before I came over to work here. I am the best. I just wish there was ten of me. This is a busy place.” Charlie seemed off the defensive, now.

“Why do you think the coaching is failing?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s not the coaching,” said Charlie. “It’s the training. We just have so much work to do that we don’t have time to coach. It’s fast paced. These guys just can’t keep up. And the turnover is killing me.”

“Charlie, what happens when a race car driver takes a curve too fast?”

“What?” said Charlie, off guard. He wanted to talk about operator through-put and I was talking about race cars.

“Let’s say there is a straight-away coming up, where we can really blow it out, but we have to negotiate a turn first. What happens if the driver takes the turn too fast?”

“Well, he’s going to hit the wall.” Charlie responded.

“Charlie, sometimes, you have to slow down to go fast.” I waited to let that sink in. “Charlie, tomorrow I want you to schedule one operator per hour to be off the phones and back into coaching. See you at 8:00 sharp.” -TF

“Move over, let me take the console. Why don’t you just watch me?” This is the ultimate in micro-managing. Charlie, the Manager, observing a mistake, simply took the project back under wing and proceeded to do the work himself.

Of course, for the past twelve minutes, Charlie had berated the Team Member for not being fast enough, taking things out of sequence and ultimately falling back to the old way of doing things.

As a Manager, Charlie had been working with Crystal’s training program. The training was designed to get telephone operators to record data in real time on the computer, rather than using paper in a two-step delayed process. In fact, Charlie got the job as the Manager because he had used this real-time process at another company. He was the best telephone operator on their crew. When he came here he picked out the software, but had been unsuccessful in getting the operators to use it. Eight months later, they were still writing paper tickets and entering the data later. If they remembered.

Charlie’s behavior, as a Manager, demonstrated the subtle difference in dealing with mistakes by a micro-manager and a coach. As a micro-manager, Charlie focused on the task and the method (mistakes). The more he focused on the task and the mistakes, the more he drove the operators back to the paper system they were comfortable with.

I let Charlie be a telephone operator for another eight minutes (he was really very good) before I pulled him aside. Tomorrow, listen in to our conversation. -TF

“I wonder what the difference is between coaching and micro-managing. At what point do we provide too much instruction, and hinder the employee’s initiative and autonomy?” responded Brittany.

Coaching and micro-managing focus on two different things. To the casual observer, they may appear similar in manager behavior, but there is a powerful distinction.

Micro-managing is task and method focused. The Manager attempts to get a task completed according to a specific method. The focus is on the task.

Coaching is method and development focused. Task completion is secondary to behavior acquisition and competence in the method. The focus is on the Team Member.

The difference between micro-managing and coaching is purpose and purpose will determine two completely different outcomes. This purpose will drive subtle, yet powerful differences in Manager behavior. This subtle difference will define the poor Manager from the great Manager.

Tomorrow, we will talk about coaching skills through mistakes to see the difference between micro-managing and coaching. -TF

“I’m not trying to show off,” defended Alex. “I have the answer, it’s quicker, it solves the problem. I know it looks like I am a just being a glory hog, but I call it a touchdown.”

I waited. Alex was in no mood to listen, not even to himself. So, I waited some more. Finally, I spoke.

“Alex, three months ago, did we expect you to have the answers to the biggest decisions on your projects?”

“Absolutely, that’s why I got the promotion.”

“Yes, three months ago, we expected you to be the best, the smartest person in the room. That’s why we promoted you to manager. Do you think this is a different game now?”

“I suppose it is or I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Alex, the game is different. Before, we expected you to have all the answers. Now you are a manager. We expect you to have all the questions. Instead of being the smartest person, you may have to be the dumbest person. I want you to ask,

What if? By when? Why did that happen? When do we expect to finish? How come that happened? What is stopping us?

“Just a few simple, dumb questions. It’s a different role you are playing, now.” -TF

“I don’t understand,” complained Christopher. “I keep telling them what they are doing wrong and they just keep doing it.”

“Christopher, would you describe that feedback as positive feedback or negative feedback?” I queried.

“Well, it’s hardly positive, so it must be negative,” he replied.

“So, if they won’t listen to negative feedback from you, who, in their life, will they accept it from?”

Chris thought for a minute. “I don’t know, their mother?”

“Unfortunately, they won’t even listen to their mother. There is only one person who can get through to them, only one person who can voice negative feedback that they will listen to.” I stopped to see that I finally had Chris’ undivided attention. “The only voice they will listen to is their own voice.”

“What do you mean? How can I get them to say negative things about themselves?”

“It’s a very simple question. To get a better result, what could you do differently? Then wait. The next words out of their mouth will state the negative feedback they need to hear from the only person they will listen to.” -TF

“Do people learn more from success or from a mistake?” I asked.

Rory looked up. “I suppose they learn more from mistakes.”

“I wonder why that is?”

“I don’t know. I never thought about it.”

“The reason people learn more from mistakes is because they sit and try to figure out what went wrong. When people are successful, they are too busy celebrating to stop and figure out what went right.

“Next time a project goes well, stop and ask yourself, what were the factors that caused things to turn out right. Learning from success can be very powerful and it feels a lot better than learning from mistakes.” -TF