Posts Tagged ‘Being A Better Manager’

One of the many key traits of successful managers is their level of self awareness. Raising your self awareness comes from reflecting on how you think you are doing and asking for feedback from others.

On the face of it this should not be that difficult to do. On the other hand recent research from the CIPD shows that there is a huge gap between perceptions and reality among the UK’s 8 million managers.

While I was expecting that there would be some differences between what employees and managers thought, the differences to say the least were stark.

Here are just a few of the things that the research highlighted.

Six in ten (61%) of managers claim they meet each person they manage at least twice a month to talk about their workload, meeting objectives and other work-related issues. However, just 24% of employees say they meet their managers with such frequency.

More than 90% of managers say they sometimes or always coach the people they manage when they meet, while only 40% of employees agree.

Three quarters (75%) of managers say they always/sometimes discuss employees’ development and career progression during one to ones, but just 38% of employees say this happens.

There are similar gaps in views between managers and employees on how often managers: joint problem solve with employees; discuss ideas employees might have to improve the business and; discuss employees’ wellbeing.

You can find a press release and access to the research in full here

With managers having a huge role to play in the success of the organisation there is clearly an opportunity to raise self awareness and at the same time gain greater engagement and ultimately bottom line results.

I wonder what your experiences have been when it came to self awareness among managers.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps highly successful professional people to become highly effective managers. He invites you to check out his free management mastery e-course.

If you are good at what you do, the chances are you will find yourself in a position where you have to manage a team sooner than you expected.

One would think that managing a team should not be that difficult, yet in reality there are many challenges. Here are 10 of the challenges I notice and have experience from managing teams.

1. Collaborating is not the norm. If you think about it, education, applying for a job and getting picked to represent your country in sports are all competitive. There are winners and losers.
2. Everyone has a view but not everyone is willing to take action or put in the effort to make the great idea a reality. It’s easier for some people to stand on the sidelines and criticise.
3. Trust is really difficult to earn and even tougher to maintain.
4. Hindsight is a great thing and people and the media are often always wise after the event.
5. People tend to remember the few times you messed up rather than the 99% of the time you did well.
6. People want to have influence but are not always willing to take responsibility for the consequences.
7. You rarely get the opportunity to hand pick your own team and more often than not you have to get by with what you inherit.
8. You have to be willing to delegate, which brings with it risk and insecurity.
9. People have short term memories and sometimes quickly forget what you have done for the team in the past.
10. You are piggy in the middle. By that I mean you have subordinates who have expectations of you as well as superiors. It can feel like a no-win situation at times.

The Bottom Line: Managing a team is both hugely rewarding and hugely demanding.

If you have enjoyed this blog post check out my Management Mastery For Professionals e-course at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

I was recently doing some cleaning out of guttering at home and, while doing this, it got me thinking about leading and managing.

We all know that to get the guttering working effectively we need to make sure that it is not blocked or clogged up.

I wonder if we truly give the same thought to what’s blocking us from leading and managing effectively.

Your block might be down to a simple lack of self confidence. Too often leaders and managers let their worries stop them from taking the decisions and actions that lead to results.

Alternatively your block might be that you struggle to get others to buy into your vision, way of working or ideas.

Maybe your block is that you are trying to be the leader or manager who does everything. You know, the person who won’t delegate or empower others to do anything.

Perhaps you are the leader or manager who struggles to listen. You will have come across the type of person who puts being right ahead of getting and acting on the ideas of others who help make huge progress.

The truth is it is rarely one thing that gets in the way of success. However, get aware of your blocks and then clearing the path can really make a huge difference to the results you achieve.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

If you are a manager or leader, an important part of your role will be to appraise performance.

At the same time, I have noticed that this is an area where managers and leaders often struggle.

So what can you do to get better at appraising performance?

1. Make sure that people have clear objectives at the start against which you can assess performance.
2. Set the meeting in context and make it clear what the meeting is and is not about.
3. Encourage the person being appraised to first give their views on how they have performed.
4. When providing your insights, highlight both positives and opportunities for improvement.
5. Give specific examples. These bring alive the feedback that you are providing.
6. Spend time talking about future aspirations.
7. Keep the focus on helping others to achieve their optimal performance.

The reality is that some simple adjustments can revolutionize your skills in appraising performance.

So what’s your best tip to getting better at appraising performance?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

One of the things that marks the very best managers and leaders from the mediocre ones is that the former take the initiative.

So what exactly do I mean by taking the initiative? Let’s look at an example:

Jane is a manager in a large organisation. She knows that there are many rules to comply with and organisational norms. Today she has come up against a challenge. She knows that the organisation guidance on the topic is vague. However, she takes time to clarify the outcome that she wants to get and maps out the first steps. In other words, she takes the initiative.

James is another manager in a large organisation. He specialises in playing the waiting game. He waits for the instructions, guidance or steps to come from someone else. As a result, he is seen as a plodder.

The truth is that if you want to get ahead in your career and stand out from the crowd, you need to be willing to take the initiative, to grab the bull by the horns.

So what’s your first step in taking the initiative?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

Research shows that ‘appreciation for a job well done’ consistently ranks highly as a motivator in employee surveys. Yet research also shows that most people don’t feel they get enough praise. So what’s going on? Putting aside the fact that it’s likely that some of our survey participants feel they should be praised for turning up every morning, my view is that managers are sometimes reluctant to give praise because they’ve had experiences of being praised themselves in ways that, frankly, haven’t motivated them at all.  And, of course, they’re not over keen on having the same effect on their staff. It’s actually quite easy to deliver praise badly – praise that is seen as patronising or manipulative by the recipient. But done well, its dynamite. Here are five ways to do it well          

1. Prepare the praise

It’s interesting that many of the managers I know will spend literally hours preparing to give criticism, but only a matter of minutes (if at all) preparing to give praise. The result? A passing comment (literally) on the lines of ‘nice job Doug, keep it up’ Say what? Which job? The whole job? Keep what up? Not only is this type of praise confusing but, by and large, it’s not wildly motivating. Top tip – spend as much time preparing to give praise as you would to give criticism      

2. Be Specific

Describe exactly what you are praising and why. Try the following method:

• When you….
• What happened was…
• And the result is….

E.g. When I showed the client the research you had done on their business she said she was really impressed by the insights you had provided. The result is she wants us to make a proposal for a further piece of business. That’s a really good outcome for us so thank you and well done

3. Show genuine interest

Ask questions to better understand what the staff member did, for example, what preparation they did for a successful presentation, how they managed to design such effective visual aids. Describe how you feel about what they’ve done e.g. pleased, impressed, excited (the hug and kiss might be slightly over doing it)

4. Let the praise stand alone

Don’t be tempted to mix the praise with criticism e.g. That was a great presentation. If only your written work was as good. Deal with the written work issue at a different time –unless, of course, you’re a fan of the ‘tall poppy syndrome’.         

5. Do it quickly and time it well

Give your praise as soon after the event as possible – it has far more impact. Be careful not to give the praise at a time when it will appear conditional or a ‘softening up’ process e.g. just before you delegate a task or ask for the person to work late

Public or Private?

There’s an old saying ‘praise in public, criticise in private’. Though I wholeheartedly agree with the latter I’m not totally convinced by the former. Of course the principle is sound. We want other staff to hear the praise and understand what we are praising because we hope that they will want to emulate those behaviours or achievements. But not everyone is comfortable being singled out in this way and some people find accepting praise in front of their colleagues embarrassing. My advice would be to deliver the praise in private. You can then ask the staff member if they are happy for you to share the praise with their colleagues – say in the next team meeting – and take it from there

 And a few final tips

If the performance you are praising is exceptional, you will probably want to bring this to the attention of your boss and possibly higher. If you have a reward system which is credible you may want to utilise this. In any event, it’s a good idea to follow up your conversation with the staff member in writing (a note will do) and to copy that note to your performance files

Joan Henshaw is the author and presenter of the video management training series ‘The 10 Minute Management Toolkit’ – the flexible, cost effective and time effective way to help managers, team leaders and supervisors learn how to motivate their staff to high performance. You can watch free videos at http://www.10mmt.com/watch-videos/