Just another WordPress site
I am a massive fan of both giving and getting great feedback. And yet I know that many managers avoid giving feedback – or even worse give it in ways that are so subtle as to be pointless.
What Every Manager Should Know About Feedback is a superb article that reflects much of what I teach on my Giving and Getting Great Feedback workshop.
I recommend both the article and workshop highly.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has spent much of his life researching ‘flow’ – that state of being when you become fully immersed in a task and time flies by. This flow state can only occur when the level of challenge is carefully matched to your level of skills and confidence. Flow is most likely to occur when you are faced by a demanding but achieveable task. Flow matters for managers because it a state that is associated with optimal performance. It is also closely associated with learning and self improvement.
It strikes me that delegation used in conjunction with feedback (another pre-requisite for the flow state) and coaching provides managers with the perfect tools to ensure that team members get a balance of skill and challenge that will enable them to enter the optimum state of flow at work.
Employees who are operating outside of the flow channel – either bored or overly anxious are likely to be performing well below their potential.
The thing about the flow channel is that you cannot remain stationery. Unless you are confronted with new challenges it is likely that boredom will become an issue and performance will dip.
This piece of research caught my attention recently;
“While 84 percent of organizations know that workforce effectiveness is important to achieving business results, only 42 percent of those surveyed say managers devote sufficient time to people management.”
What stops managers from spending time on developing workforce effectiveness?
Why do so many managers ‘duck’ managing people.
For me the managers job is not about ‘managing people’. It is about providing them with a relationship to the organisation that allows them to develop their potential and to do great work.
In my experience managers that work systematically on building this relationship and then use:
to develop each persons contribution to performance very soon become outstanding managers recognised as leading high performing teams.
However it does take time – perhaps 60-90 minutes per week for each person managed to do the most effective job. But the returns on that investment can be enormous – I would estimate productivity gains per person to be in the region of 25-40% within 6 months.
Back to work after the bank holiday and another morning waking up to Radio 4’s Today Programme. This morning it was medical doctor (retired I believe) who caught my ears claiming the the problem with the NHS today was too much management. And I have a certain sympathy for his point of view. Peter Drucker once said,
“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”
and there does seem to be a fair bit of this in the NHS.
But how do we square this with the Healthcare commission report that found that fewer than 1 in 5 of staff in my local PCT or Acute Trust had received a performance review in the last 12 months that they found helpful? Personal development plans are poor and ineffective and staff engagement is weak.
The answer is obvious.
The problem is not too much management, but too much of the wrong kind of management. The kind that is obsessed about measuring ‘performance’ and then hectoring (in some cases bullying) staff to produce more – rather than engaging and developing staff in the challenge of providing ever improving healthcare.
What is required is not more of the ‘scientific’ management of the performance management consultants but more person centred management that helps staff to reconnect with their reasons for joining the NHS and helping to find satisfaction and fulfillment in a job well done.
(If you are interested in this topic then you must check out the post that Tom Peters has just written.)
Willing volunteers outperform conscripts and mercenaries every time. They are more innovative and creative as well more diligent and disciplined.
Volunteers have bought into a mission and a purpose rather then been bought into it.
Much of the private sector is struggling with how to turn salaried staff from conscripts and mercenaries into volunteers. Finding ways to engage them in the work of the organisation. To provide them with fulfilling and rewarding work.
Much of the public and third sector seems to be taking almost exactly the opposite path. It finds ways to turn passionate and caring volunteers (people who have bought into the mission) into conscripts and mercenaries. This is achieved by:
It is a strange paradox that many private sector clients are making genuine efforts at developing employee engagement in pursuit of profits while so many third sector and public sector organisations are developing processes and systems that alienate employees and volunteers in pursuit of efficiency.