Category: Management Practice

#1: The Resistor – “This will never work.”, “We tried this before.”, “It will fail like all the other times.”

How to vanquish: Be curious. Explore their experiences. Understand what they noticed then and what they are assuming now. When you’ve exhausted the treasure trove of information they have to offer, ask them what they think might work.

#2: The Influencer – The thinking, collaboration and innovation starts off slightly left of the strategic center and starts to bend the organization away from your vision and towards their own personal version of reality.  

How to vanquish: Ensure leadership has a common definition of the mission, vision and strategy of your organization. Test decisions and directions routinely against the strategic path and be transparent about divergence from it. “I notice this puts us on a different timeline than we agreed to. What is the value of that? What new metrics would we need to agree on for that to work?”

#3: The Lone Ranger – The Lone Ranger thinks she knows what’s best, will gather a merry marauding band behind her and set out onto the open road to accomplish what clearly only she can.  

How to vanquish: Have the ole “there’s no I in TEAM” speech, set your expectations regarding their role in the execution of your strategy and tell them there will be consequences if they attempt to mutiny again. Be willing to let them go.

#4: The Mascot – Helping the mascot be successful feels sort of like pushing a little old lady into traffic while breaking your mother’s heart. The Mascot is the great defender of organizational legacy.

How to vanquish: Do an organ transplant. Either get consent from the mascot to remove the legacy flag and replace it with the current and future flags or invite them to transplant themselves elsewhere. Tough stuff.

Be Uncommon.

Every. Single. Manager.

We were in the middle of a major organizational transformation. Our business model needed to change, the type of skill sets and talent needed to be different and the culture needed to shift. To support these changes, managers – who in most cases were long-tenured, highly knowledgeable subject matter experts we wanted to retain – were going to need to use vastly different metrics to hire, develop, coach, manage and exit employees than they had in the past.

Support for Managers

To support the managers, we changed the performance management system (made it more brief, less arduous, more casual), we provided training and job aids and we assigned every single manager a coach to guide them through the development of their expectations for employees, the summarizing of their observations of employee work and the preparation of their conversations with employees about which things were going well and which things not so much.

Benefit to Managers

Some managers got great benefit from this coaching support, were super-appreciative and took the opportunity to hone their people leadership craft. Others, not so much. Some of the others didn’t make the time, wouldn’t follow up, didn’t call back, missed their appointments, didn’t apply the learnings or felt it was a waste of time and money.

If It’s a Choice, Don’t Do It

I’ve written before about how management needs to be an expectation with clear success metrics and consequences. And before any HR initiative is rolled out we must ask the question: Are we doing this as a nice to have or is it a must do. In other words – Are we training people so they can choose whether to apply the learnings or are we training people because there will be consequences if they don’t apply the learnings; like safety protocol or GAAP accounting practices. If we’re spending money in HR it ought to be because it matters. Otherwise – spend your time on something else.

My undergraduate degree was a B.A. in Interpersonal Communication and Rhetoric. I loved the major. We studied political communication, social communication, gender communication and marketing communication. We read Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. We argued the existence of a chair, we argued for and against Euthanasia (not to be confused with Youth in Asia) and we came to see that it is nothing short of miraculous that any one of us can understand anything any other one of us thinks at all.

It’s Complicated

The process of communication involves one person translating a thought (a result of all the nature, nurture and context that exists in that person’s head) into mutually understood symbols and delivering it through a channel to another person who then translates the symbols into a thought of their own (borne of all the nature, nurture and context in their head) which is then fed back in a similarly conceived and delivered response.

So when I hear or read one person say, oh, something like…

• I think we’ve heard enough about race
• It’s a beautiful day
• That was a wonderful performance
• The VW is a good choice
• We need to have a clearer strategy
• There are a ton more dandelions this year
• Schools should reopen fully

…and then I hear or read another person’s immediate response of “I disagree”, it drives me absolutely BONKERS.

It’s Not Possible

How can you possibly disagree???? Of the above statements, the longest had eight words and that was about DANDELIONS. There is no possible WAY you could POSSIBLY understand the full measure of what the person is thinking never mind disagree with them.

Tell me more

If we are to move from discord to discourse from divisive incivility to constructive conversation we need to give more space to curiosity, connection and engagement in the pursuit of understanding. It doesn’t take any more time or energy – in fact it can take less, or at least can be time and energy better spent – to open first – and hear and listen – and work to understand.

You Try it

The next time someone says something you do not believe is true, instead of falling prey to your stress response, throwing down your verbal gauntlet and preparing for battle, try saying “Tell me more.” As Stephen Covey said in Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Engage with more curiosity. Ask “what makes you say that?”, “what are you comparing against?”, what has been your experience?”, “what would you like to see instead?”. See what you discover.

When It’s You

Think of it this way: when it’s you sharing your thought – a thought that bubbled up into your voice box after taking shape in your mind and getting tested against your nature and your experience – it’s a vastly different feeling you get when met with “Tell me more” than it is being met with “I disagree.”

Wouldn’t you agree?

This recent Gallup article “How to Build Trust and Boost Productivity within Remote Teams” is so practical, true and helpful it brought tears to my eyes. If you are a manager or have one in your midst, read it and share it so that managers can be more successful and improve everyone’s lives they come in management contact with.

The exercise the author gives to managers for the purpose of assessing trust issues is simple and effective. The questions they provide to evaluate and improve team engagement and performance are right on target.

It’s Not the Team. It’s The Manager.

From the article: “Our findings in short: Your remote workers’ productivity depends on one role — the manager.”

Let me cull out and emphasize their point here in case it was lost in all that extra verbiage: It’s the manager. It’s the manager. It’s the manager. Who is it? It’s the manager.

It’s Not the Manager. It’s the Leadership.

Now, if your managers are not doing the right management stuff and don’t seem to respond with genuine interest when you suggest they should, it may not be entirely their fault. Yes, their actions are proven to be the most significant factor in team performance and engagement but the blame for failing to take those actions may not be theirs alone.

Is their management responsibility an expectation? Is it managed by their leaders? Is it measured? Are there consequences for not managing? If you answered “No” to one or more of these questions, then it’s no wonder your managers aren’t taking the time to manage: evidently it’s not a priority of the organization.

Leadership’s Role

Your organization’s leaders may know in their heart of hearts or brain of brains that good management makes a difference. But have they taken the time to define what they expect? What management success looks like? Which aspects of management will move the needle on strategy and execution so that vision can be achieved? It’s as easy to do as defining financial results. So if they haven’t done it, why not? One of my favorite diagnostics to use when goals or expectations aren’t being met are these four questions:

Performance Diagnostic

• Do they know what needs to be done? (Do they know that management expectations ought to be defined and managed)
• Do they know why it’s important? (Do they know the impact of defining and managing those expectations?)
• Do they know how to do it? (Do they know how to define the aspects of management that will move the organization?)
• Do they want to? (Do they want to define and manage those expectations?)

The answers to these questions help determine your course of action.

It’s Not the Leadership. It’s You.

As HR pros and people leaders, we have a responsibility to hold our fellow leaders, managers and professionals to the expectations related to organizational success. If your managers are not interested in managing, perhaps leaders need to be held accountable for those results and their obligation to improve them. If your leaders are interested but don’t know how, it’s our job to get them those resources. If neither your managers or leaders are interested in holding themselves accountable for management excellence and it’s important to you, perhaps you could use a hand before you burn out managing the inevitable and incessant fallout.

The uncommonly good leader cares deeply about the methods by which we build organizations through people. Be uncommonly good.