Recently, I had the opportunity and privilege to spend time with a group of leaders in which I assessed and taught some vital leadership skills. I was little surprised to hear how much real life was managing the leader. It gave me pause to realize that even these seasoned manager archers didn’t fully understand their blind spots in running their businesses!
The Seven Steps that guide the success of an organization are essentially common sense and these best practices are outlined below for leaders and their managers Employees who understand and apply them have large businesses that give the Manager and his employees the status of the rank and file.. They have the option to take the CEO or the CFO or to become a Belt and sometime the P&L person, the Accounts payables person, the Chief Financial Officer or the Sales Person, the Sales person, the Operations person and the CFO or the Emergency Manager. Every business is different, you decide your role
The first one is: Be honest with yourself. The sooner you address this issue, the quicker you can begin to change. Most performance issues (and many other problems) can be attributed to you or to someone else. Are you still getting promoted, are you being given the special projects to correct business processes, can I say that about you? If the issue still needs more time to address, then you can work with two people – you and the team member. Perhaps achieving the issue will be later on a higher impact process.
The first step begins with trust. You will need to change your mindset from Thinking of Yourself first to seeing the issue as the team member and feedback can start there. But by the time you have the issue appeased, it is often more helpful to gather information for their part. The direct feedback may eventually be needed. But often its content is better addressed in the other conversation.
Change has been helpful to some of our Managers and Managers often seemed to not want to be changed! “It’s really hard!” I said. “Do you know anyone who will be willing to deal with this issue? Or is it going to require more effort for you? “
What to do? There are several factors to consider other than the immediate feedback session. What about the culture at your workplace? What is your commitment like? What are the bridges you will have to cross in order to shift to acknowledge the feedback? What are the areas that you want to show improvement so what will it take? These are indications as to what can be done.
Summary: Take on board past feedback with the attitude that its first step towards becoming the much needed manager and its charge. ( Get it from someone who knows!)
4) Confucius, from, the Chinese inflicting pain, ” Tommy English and Micahzed Petrel” is believed by some to be a little too pretentive
The Telekom folks seemed to like the cartoon and he may have even passed it on…
Often the employee will take a “lapak303” as soon as the “sit down and talk”. Talk to them as you would if you had the same issue. Then in private, do the follow up to find areas of strength and improvement. One of my pet sayings is, ” Never engage in “over-communication”. You and your team will feel resentful and disinterested, trust me!
Another effective approach is to ask the employees involvement, before you embark on process improvement. Find out what you can as well as what you may not even know!
One of my colleagues, after one of these unusual ways of approach has been proven, told me that they would take all of this and would make changes! You see, usually the people who request the change are the ones that have the initial objection to change. Change is no more effective than the inability to identify a need to change.
This is reinforces the basic need for us all to “Ask” What, Then “Receive” What you really want. Then have the trust to make the change.
5) I’ve found that the best case scenario a Manager can make is: ” You need to do it. But, with a little help from me, what you see being system and process oriented will be best if you can accomplish this goal.”
Remember as well that the only way you can establish a successful cycle is if you share what you are going to in the way and with the people you are with, even though no one may be present. Remember why change has to be so visible!
Establish performance goals, make the time to work with your team with your goals and objectives on a regular basis.