Tag Archives: manager

How to Get Employee Engagement

1 Reply

“So, they ran the last manager off in three months?”

“Yes,” replied Julia.

“How do you think you broke through?”

“Well, the story about the previous manager was all pretense. Ralph was posturing to see how I would react.”

“And?”

“I could have responded the same way, but I didn’t. Instead, I asked him questions about the way things were being done. Fact-based questions allow the ice to be broken. Then I moved from facts to purpose.” Julia’s plan was emerging.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“First, I asked him about their most significant achievement, as a team. Everybody likes to brag so he told me about a particularly difficult project that had gone very well.” Julia stopped. “And then, I asked him why that was important. The level of the conversation had moved from pretense to purpose. And I had moved it in only four questions.”

“And?”

“And I still have a long way to go, but it’s a start.”

What do People Care About, in Their Manager?

Leave a reply

Julia had a breakthrough, at least she hoped that’s what it was.

“Ralph thought I was going to tell how to do his job,” she said. “I could tell he was baiting me. He had some story about the last manager, how he tried to change things. Ralph seemed proud that, three months later, the team was successful in running him off.”

“How long has Ralph worked here?” I asked.

“Seven years.”

“And you?”

“Seven months, but I have an engineering degree and five years with another company.” Julia was trying not to be defensive.

“Do you think Ralph cares about that?”

Julia slowed her response. “No, not really.”

“So, what was the breakthrough today?”

“Well, he didn’t say he was going to try and run me off, too.”

“Okay, we will call that a start.”
___
Amazon still has a promotion going on Hiring Talent. Thanks to everyone who already owns a copy. -TF

The Purist Management Tool

Leave a reply

“You seem confident in your ability to draw the team member into the conversation?” I asked.

“I feel like it is an important management skill,” said Julia. We had been talking about bringing value to the other members of her team. As a new manager, we anticipated resistance to her leadership.

“Some people call it the art of conversation, but it’s a skill, an essential management skill,” continued Julia. “I think about all the things I can do to make a difference, to influence my team to higher performance, to boost morale. I can’t do it with email, though I have tried. I can’t do it with pep talks, they don’t last very long. I can’t do it by putting teamwork posters on the wall. The strongest tool I have, as a manager, is the skill of conversation.

“It’s the purest of management tools, one person simply talking to another person. If you can’t do that, you can’t be a manager. If you can do that, you can be a great manager.”

“Julia, you talk about it as a skill, as something that can be learned?”

“Yes. Oh, yes,” Julia responded. “I was terrible at it. I mean, I’m not a wallflower, but having purposeful management conversations is something I had to learn. I have discovered some basic elements and patterns. These patterns help me consistently to have conversations about purpose, actions and accountabilities.” I could see through the glass window in the door that two people were standing outside. Team members with questions.

“Let’s pick this up tomorrow. I would like to talk to you more about this conversational structure.”

How to Deal with Pushback

Leave a reply

“So, Julia, you are in this conversation, looking for common ground. What if the team member isn’t giving you anything to work with?”

“Impossible,” Julia responded. “Unless, they are stiff arming me.”

Julia was a new manager on a team with nine men and two women. I was anticipating some pushback from some of the vets. This was not going to be easy.

“What do you mean, stiff arming?” I asked

“Sometimes, egos come in to play. They think they have to act tough in front of their co-workers, be uncooperative with the new boss. Maybe if they stiff arm me long enough, I will get fired. But it’s only a pretense. It’s just a game. I have to draw them out of the game and into the conversation.”

“What does that sound like?” I pushed.

“I usually start with fact-based questions. I stay away from opinions and judgments in the beginning. In these fact-based questions, I am looking to build up the tiniest bit of trust. It’s pretty simple, really. I ask a question. They respond. Nothing bad happens. I ask another question. They respond. Nothing bad happens. And the questions are easy

Tell me about your job? What do you do? Where do you get the materials? What machines do you use? On a good day, how many units do you produce?

“After a few minutes, the pretense goes away,” Julia continued. “I have drawn them into the conversation by asking them fact-based questions. It may not be a deep conversation, but at least they are out of the ego game.”

How to Find Common Ground

2 Replies

“Like I said, I will ask them about the way they see themselves in their role on the team,” responded Julia. We had been talking about her new management position.

“And what if you don’t like what you hear?” I asked.

That was a hard question. Julia started her sentence twice before completing it. “I just have to keep digging. Somewhere in there is a small starting point. Somewhere in there is a small place where we can agree.”

“Is that the point of intersection we were talking about?”

“Yes.” Julia was on a roll. “And I have to find it before we can go on. Sometimes you have to go slow before you can go fast. Until I make that connection, until I find that point of intersection, we are not going anywhere in the conversation.”

“And what do you think happens between the two of you when you find that point of intersection?”

“It’s like a little piece of magic. We get something we can build on and move forward with. Until we find that common ground, all we have are differences. You cannot build on differences.”

How to Start, as a New Manager, in the Company

Leave a reply

Julia was accurate in describing her situation. She was a woman in a male dominated work environment, and now, she was the manager. Her team wasn’t downright hostile, but she would have to earn their respect quickly. There were changes that needed to be made and her boss was expecting results in short order.

“How will you bring value as the new manager on the block?” I asked.

“I think it is important for each team member to understand what I expect from their role on the team.”

“And, how will you do that?”

Julia thought briefly, struggling between what she really thought and what she figured I wanted to hear. “I am going to schedule an individual meeting with each person.” She stopped to check my reaction before going on.

“Okay. What is that meeting going to sound like?” I prodded.

“Questions, I am going to ask questions and listen. I am going to ask questions about what they think their job is, what they think their role is.”

“And why is that an important question?”

Julia knew it was important, but she had never thought about why. Suddenly, she knew. “Before I tell them my expectations, I need to find out where they stand. I need to know how far apart we are. It’s a guarantee we will start from different places. I need to gauge the distance of the journey to find that point where we have common ground.”

I smiled. “The point of intersection, that’s a good place to start. How do you get there?”

Who to Hold Accountable?

1 Reply

“You are not a manager so people can report to you,” I announced. The class stood still. “You are a manager to bring value to the problem solving and decision making of your team.”

Slowly, a hand went up in the back of the room. “But how will they know who to report to?” A murmur of chuckles circulated.

“Look,” I started. “When you have a new employee, you think the most important question is, who are they going to report to? That is not the central question. The central question is, which manager will be accountable for their output?”

“Accountable?” came the question from the back of the room.

“I know it’s a foreign concept,” I smiled. “Yes, a manager is that person in the organization held accountable for the output of other people.”

“But if my team member screws up, it’s not my fault?” the back of the room voice defended.

I shook my head. “It’s not a matter of fault. I hold you, as the manager, accountable for the output of your team members. Most organizations get this wrong and that is where the trouble starts.”

Judging Potential in a Candidate

2 Replies

“So, I was considered to have potential, because I got to know the inspectors at the building department?” Monica chuckled.

“That was only the tip of the iceberg,” I said. “Do you remember, as a supervisor, you were playing around with the construction schedules. One group said they would get their work done in so many days, and the next group needed that many days. And most of our projects were always coming in late.”

“Yes,” Monica nodded. “It was an interesting experiment. Everyone thought I was nuts until I brought my project in ahead of schedule. That never happens in construction.”

“And you did it without raising your voice,” I observed.

“It was funny,” she explained. “The framers said they needed three weeks, the electrical guys said they needed one week and the plumbers said they needed two weeks, and that was just for the rough-in. Then the sheetrock crew wanted a week, the trim guys wanted a week for the finish work. Then the electrical guys wanted another week for their punch list and the plumbers another week to set all the fixtures. That’s ten weeks. And I only had seven weeks for that phase of the project.”

“And do you remember what you did to accelerate the project?”

“It was easy really. I knew everyone was padding their time budgets. I call it a buffer. I asked each crew to divide their time budget into the working part and the buffer part. I mean, there are legitimate things that happen to delay projects, that’s why they build in buffers. So, every team gave me their work time budget and their buffer time budget. Each group had almost 40 percent of their time in buffers and none wanted to budge. Total work time was six weeks, total buffer time was four weeks. I told each crew that we were preserving their buffer time, but moving all buffers to the end of the project, scheduling only for work time. One thing I know, if you give a crew ten days, six days work and four days buffer, it will take them ten days to finish. Work expands to the time allotted. But if you give that same crew six days to work, they will finish in six days. So, if there was a legitimate delay, I gave them back one of their buffer days from the end of the project. Indeed, there were some delays and over the course of this phase of the project, we used an entire week of buffer. But, at the end of seven weeks, we came in on time with three weeks of buffer left over.”

“So, when we considered that you had potential to be a manager,” I explained, “we based our judgment on evidence, not hope.”

Promoted to Manager

3 Replies

Now, we were in a pickle. Our top salesperson for last year, $450,000 in gross sales, was on the chopping block to be fired.

In January, he had been promoted to sales manager, moved to a guaranteed salary equal to last year’s total comp, and now he was failing. Relieved of all, but the most critical accounts, he was supposed to be leading the sales group, holding meetings, inspiring, helping others to set targets and holding them accountable. As a salesperson, he was great, as a sales manager, he was the pits.

Classic mistake. Take your best producer, whether it is in sales, production or research and make them the manager. Management requires a totally different skill-set, with a high interest in getting people to work together, miles apart from producing technical work.

Once done, tough to get undone. No one likes to move backwards. Most importantly, whose fault was it?

How to Delegate, Not the Right Question

Leave a reply

“I guess I am feeling a little burned out,” Cynthia said. “There is just so much to do, now that I am a manager. I feel stretched, way stretched.”

“How did the manager, before you, handle all of this workload?” I asked.

“Oh, that was different. I am still working all my old job responsibilities, plus my new responsibilities as manager.” Cynthia stopped. “So, I am working twice as hard. No wonder I feel burned out.”

“Who do you plan to give your old responsibilities to?”

“Well, I am trying,” Cynthia continued. “I just haven’t figured out how.”

“Wrong question,” I said.

“What?” Cynthia was startled.

“Wrong question,” I nodded. “You will never make any headway figuring out how. You will only make headway when you figure out who. The solution is almost never a how, it’s almost always a who.”

“So, I should stop trying to figure out how I am going to get it all done and focus on who is going to do it?” Cynthia was surprised at her own question.

She knew the answer.