Executives often promote their best “doers” (e.g., accountant, technician, designer, etc.) into management roles with high and eager expectations. The challenge with this is that what makes people great in their doer roles rarely make them competent for management jobs.
At a minimum, to make a promotion successful, the newly minted managers need to learn about the roles that they’re stepping into and what skills are necessary to be effective in management.
One of my executive clients asked me – with some exasperation – why he had to adapt his style to communicate more effectively with his employees.
I share this story because this person is intelligent, passionate, and goal driven. But he has an abrupt demeanor, and his acerbic delivery puts off many of the people who work for him. We’ve worked on this issue of effective communication for months, but he doesn’t consider this a priority.
Leaders who overtly exercise favoritism make the “chosen” people feel good but often at the expense of diminishing others. Of course, it is appropriate to recognize people who do excellent work, but that recognition should not be at the expense of making other employees feel “less than”.
Our employees are human and are pleased or flattered to receive recognition, whether private or public. When public acknowledgement primarily focuses on favored employees, however, resentment can ensue.
Can you motivate an employee whose performance is lackluster? The answer is imbedded in the distinction between motivation and inspiration: we can inspire the people who work with us, but motivation needs to come from within.
Leaders can be especially frustrated when they haven’t been able to inspire employees to perform at a higher level. One client suggested that an employee’s work was about a B- level and he was trying to raise it to an A. This is a worthy goal, but is it attainable?
Do you know people who have rigid views about most things? Conversations with them either turn into spirited debates or one-sided monosyllabic dead ends.
Even if you have a firm perspective on a given topic, when you open your mind to listening to an unfamiliar perspective, it can enhance and expand your thinking.
“And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
– Maya Angelou
Current events always create interruptions in our day-to-day world, but during the past few weeks these interruptions have been disruptions. Most recently is this week’s massacre of children in Uvalde, which trails only a few short weeks from the execution in the supermarket in Buffalo.
Despite their best efforts, many leaders still struggle to “get it right” in terms of managing a hybrid workforce. A recent Harvard Business Review article points out five key trends for leaders to consider.
Leaders are adopting different mindsets to be successful managing a hybrid environment based on these trends. Some of the key points from the article are highlighted below.
Many leaders become frustrated with mid-level managers because of the perception they’re not doing their jobs adequately. When you really dig into this observation, it’s often because new mid-level managers don’t fully understand what is expected of them.
The leader is responsible for outlining the core elements of what is expected from managers. Here are some guidelines to consider:
Do you have too many meetings in a typical week? It happens a lot, and you can suffer from “meeting madness” as a result. This is an affliction caused by too many meetings that aren’t focused, take too long, and accomplish a tenth of what you expect. Here are some tips to consider.
Start and end on time. The obvious breach is when people are late. That isn’t fair to those who are on time, especially if it means that you won’t complete what you expected to accomplish. As important, however, is having a firm end time. Stay true to the end time even if you haven’t completed the agenda. It will help build the discipline to end on time in the future.
When is the best time for a manager to jump in and redirect an employee’s actions? If there was an easy answer, we’d be able to magically click an app that could predict the perfect moment. Nice idea, but not happening!
Managers often struggle with this timing. If they start too soon, they become micromanagers. If they wait too long, they may be too late, and the employee may have made a big mistake. As each situation is different, you need to decide based on the actual circumstances.