Tag Archives: respect

The Aretha Franklin Rule

Leave a reply

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 this will 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 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 team member of an organization, in their pursuit of doing a good job, will always seek out the person who brings value to their problem solving and decision making.

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 problem solving and decision making of your team.

That’s it. What can you do, as a manager, to bring value to the thinking and work of your team members? -Tom

How to Interview for Human Relations Skills

Leave a reply

From the Ask Tom mailbag –

Question:
Okay, we got integrity, customer care and individual initiative. The last value we want to interview for is our people. By that, I mean respect for others, support for others, collaboration and cooperation.

Response:
Same model as the past couple of days, interviewing for an attitude, a characteristic or soft skill.

  1. Identify the behavior connected to the attitude or characteristic.
  2. Identify a circumstance where we might see that behavior.
  3. Develop questions about the behavior.

Your description identifies some behavioral things, like collaboration, cooperation and support. That’s a good start. Your team can likely come up with more related behaviors to the value you have in mind.

Connected behaviors

  • Collaboration, or cooperation on a team
  • Support for another teammate
  • Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate

Behavior – Collaboration or cooperation in a team.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project that required multiple steps and multiple people to solve a problem?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the problem?
  • How many steps involved?
  • How many people on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • To solve the problem, how did the team have to work together?
  • When the team worked well together, what happened?
  • When the team did not work well together, what happened?
  • When the team did not work well together, what was the impact on the project?
  • How did the team know when it was working well together and not so well together?
  • When the team did not work well together, what did it do to start working better together? What steps were taken? What was said?

Behavior – Supporting another teammate.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where another team member was taking the lead, but some team members disagreed with the work method or sequence of work?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the purpose (goal, objective) of the project?
  • How long was the project?
  • How many on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • What was the leader’s role on the project team?
  • What was the disagreement about?
  • What words were said?
  • Which side of the disagreement were you on?
  • How was the situation resolved?

Behavior – Respect for a manager, or respect for another team mate.

  • Tell me about a time when you worked on a project where you disagreed with the manager about a work method or sequence of work?
  • What was the project?
  • What was the purpose of the project?
  • How long was the project?
  • How many people on the project team?
  • What was your role on the project team?
  • What was the disagreement about?
  • How did you approach the disagreement?
  • What words were said?
  • How was the situation resolved?

You can interview for any attitude, characteristic or soft skill, as long as you can connect it to behaviors.

No Respect

1 Reply

“Tell me about that picture of the next step for you, as a manager.” I was talking to Jeanine.

“I can’t. I can’t do it until I have the authority to do it.” She was struggling with her new position in the company. She was handed a project to help solve some communication issues between several teams inside the company. “I just don’t have their respect. If I had the title, it would just be easier.”

“Jeanine, I can’t give you the title. You have to earn the title. I cannot make people have respect for you, it has to be earned.”

“But, if I don’t have the authority, how can I get their respect?”

I paused. “Jeanine, it is really very simple. All you have to do is bring value to the problem solving and decision making of those around you. Stimulate their thinking, help them move to the next level, show them how they can solve their own problems.

“People will always seek out others in the organization that bring value to their thinking and their work. If their manager is not bringing value to the party, the team member will always seek out the person that is.

“If you want respect, forget the title. Bring value to the problem solving and decision making of those around you. You will earn it.”