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121s, Covey, and Priority Management

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Time and Priority Management Quadrants - Covey

Another reason why 121s are so powerful dawned on me this morning.  And it relates to the Stephen Covey Priority and Time Management Quadrants shown above.

121s almost compel you to focus on quadrant 2 type activities.

Quadrant 1 stuff has to be done almost immediately- it can’t wait for a 121.  And who is going to continually bring quadrant 3 and 4 items into play with their manager?

So the existence of 121s more or less forces attention onto the important but not urgent quadrant which is the one where the greatest value tends to be created.

So pay attention to the content of your 121s and see what you can do to bring the focus onto quadrant 2.

Affirming Feedback and Praise

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I meet a lot of managers who confuse praise with affirming feedback.

Affirming feedback is a tool used to:

  • make someone aware of a specific behaviour or action that they have taken,
  • understand specifically the positive nature of the impacts of that behaviour or action,
  • increase the chances of further examples of that behaviour or action in the future.

Affirming feedback is a powerful tool primarily for influencing future behaviour.

Praise on the other hand is about the past.  It is about ensuring that someone feels recognised and valued for something that they have done.  It is usually MUCH less specific than feedback and sometimes given with much less clear intent.  It is just as powerful as affirming feedback and effective praise should be encouraged.

However, praise is not without its risks.  If praise is:

  • ill timed
  • embarrassing
  • diluted or over-inflated
  • undeserved

It can certainly do more harm than good.  For more on the problems of praise read this post.

Triple bottom lines, social enteprise, localism and sustainability

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  1. Triple bottom lines
  2. Social enterprise
  3. Localism and
  4. Sustainability

Four hot topics.

Four inter-related topics

Four topics that get a lot of people very fired up to make change happen (definition of enterprise?).

Yet when I surveyed over 100 enterprise professionals recently this was one of their lowest priorities for personal and professional development?

Are missing a trick in really understanding what motivates many contemporary entrepreneurs – because in many cases money is only seen as a by product of success, a way of keeping score, and not as an end in itself.

A few relevant websites:

http://www.greenbiz.com/

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/social-entrepreneurship/

and Leeds very own: http://www.ppp-online.co.uk/

10 Ways to Make Your Employees Love You

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This is the title of a great blog post written by Alison Green.   Now I am not sure that we necessarily need all employees to love us but I bet that her list (which I have paraphrased below) contains some insights and clues into how most of us could become MUCH better managers.

  1. Don’t shout, disparage or attack people – nor employees, not customers, not bosses.
  2. Be reasonable. Hold people to high standards, but that don’t demand the impossible.
  3. Keep your word.
  4. Make your team feel respected and valued: Act in ways that show you care about their quality of life. And don’t underestimate the impact of regularly making sure great employees know you think they’re great.
  5. Solicit feedback. Ask for input on everything from how the employee thinks last week’s event went to what you could be doing to make her job easier.
  6. Stay focused on results. Don’t have rules and policies for their own sake; make sure each is connected to an actual business need, and be willing to bend the rules if it makes sense overall.
  7. Workout what people need to do their job better, and help them get it.
  8. Recognise and take the difficult decisions as well as the easy ones
  9. Be honest about performance problems.
  10. Don’t assume you know what’s going on.