Jump In or Hold Back?

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.

Update on The Great Resignation

Earlier this month, the Department of Labor reported that 4.3 million people left their jobs in January, suggesting that The Great Resignation hasn’t abated.

Hopefully, you’ve been paying close attention to the vibe in your company, as you don’t want to be caught off-guard.

Accountability for Others

Managers often ask how to hold their employees accountable. This is a difficult question to answer, because one of the biggest variables is your organizational culture. Some cultures support their people when it comes to accountability issues, while others cast blame.

If your culture is focused on learning and growth, you tend to tie accountability with learning and professional development. For example, if Sarah misses an important deadline, the manager will discuss what happened to create that result. Sarah may have had a good reason but didn’t communicate it ahead of time.

Acknowledgments

People don’t need to be acknowledged all the time. In fact, if you’re constantly praising someone, it can become noise after a while.

But that isn’t normally the case. More often than not, we don’t give sufficient acknowledgement to the people who make our lives easier/better/more comfortable. As yesterday was Random Acts of Kindness Day (which I introduced two weeks ago), take a minute to acknowledge someone who isn’t expecting it.

Navigating Organizational Change

People often say that they welcome change, but you don’t need to dig too far below the surface to realize that many people actually resist it. They outwardly support change while internally fear how it will affect them.

This frequently occurs during an organizational or management change, which can be tricky. The new regime doesn’t do things the same way as the outgoing people. And nor should they!

Random Acts of Kindness

Generosity is far more than a charitable donation you make or the amount of a birthday gift to a family member. Every day is an opportunity to be generous and to offer it in modest ways to enhance other people’s lives.

“That’s what I consider true generosity:
You give your all and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”
– Simone de Beauvoir

The Benefits of Patience

The more stressed people are, the more impatient they become. When impatient people congregate, mood and morale gets worse…and bad feelings accelerate.

Leaders know the value of patience. Those who exercise it regularly are rewarded by everything from diffusing people’s anxiety and bad moods to making better decisions.

Do You Have a Strong Bench?

The OMICRON variant of COVID is hitting different parts of the country in waves. New York City, for example, has suffered quite a bit as the level of contagion has been higher and more aggressive than previous waves of the virus.

To illustrate, at the end of December a third of the New York City Fire Department was out on leave because of the volume of people who had contracted the virus.

What’s the Alternative?

Leaders are faced with all sorts of decisions daily; some are innocuous, others significant. Most decisions are made primarily on autopilot. You’ve done something a million times, a similar situation arises, and you act on it quickly without giving it much thought.

Other decisions, however, take a lot more effort especially because they are out of your day-to-day comfort zone. This could be a decision to hire or fire a key employee or to embark on capital expenditures that are higher than you’ve authorized in the past.

Welcome to 2022

I hope your first week of the new year is going well and has set the tone for productive, meaningful, and healthy weeks ahead. We talked about goals in December, and presumably you’ve come up with some that suit your outlook for the months ahead.

Goals involve identifying tangible factors that will presumably be achieved at some point in the future. Some people are successful working towards these kinds of objectives; others lose attention early in the process. Goal setting and achievement is largely a cognitive process, so you rely on your brain to get you to your destination.

Leadership is a Mindset

Tag: leadership