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From Good to Great Manager – Part 4 – The Power of Delegation

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Good bosses delegate.

Great bosses set up sensible monitoring routines so that they know how that delegation is going.

Good bosses engage employees in helping them with major projects.

Great bosses give their team members the major projects and are available to support them as required. They give the team members room to operate – without cutting them off.

Good bosses walk around the office talking to people – what Tom Peters calls Managing by Wandering Around or MBWA.

Great ones do that too, but they are careful not to ‘intrude’. They use MBWA as a way of getting information that helps them to give accurate feedback, to coach effectively and to delegate.

From Good to Great Manager – Part 3 – The Power of Appreciation

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The third in our occasional series on making the transition from being a good manager to being a great one.

Great managers know who does what.

Good managers are able to get a team to pull together to produce the goods.

Great managers know exactly who contributed what to the team effort. They take time to acknowledge and appreciate each person’s contribution.

They also know who has piggy backed on the hard work of others.  They give feedback and praise based on their own analysis and understanding of the person’s contribution.  They make sure that the feedback is based on firm evidence.

They use feedback and praise lavishly and effectively.

They know that by increasing the amount of appreciation in the organisation they increase esteem, confidence and self belief – vital ingredients to building high performing teams.

What opportunities does the Power of Appreciation hold for helping you to make the transition from good to great?

The Benefits of Slow Learning

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I was looking at a competitor’s Management Development Conference one day programme. The conference promises to ‘make you a better manager’ and ‘help you to get the most out of your team’. Much of the content looks excellent – not a million miles away from what I teach on the PMN – feedback, coaching, delegation, goal setting, management style etc.

However this conference teaches in a day what I teach over a series of four half day sessions spread out over several months. I think that very few managers would be able to absorb all of this content in one day and then to apply it successfully. It looks like it has been put together more for the convenience of the trainer than the learner.

Feedback from PMN members has shown the importance of not trying to learn too much too quickly when it comes to developing your performance as a manager. How much you learn is far less important than how much you can put to use at work.

Learning something, putting it into practice and becoming comfortable with it is important before trying to learn and implement the next thing. Leaving enough time between learning sessions to incorporate what you have learned into your practice makes a lot of sense.

Try to make too many changes too quickly and things can quickly go pear shaped.

Learning new skills as a manager is one area where the tortoise really will consistently beat the hare.

Moving Office!

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Been a quiet week on the blogging front – mainly because I have been moving to a new office.

Just waiting for the e-mails to start flowing again as my new ‘IP address propogates across the internet’!  Amazing how much you can get done with fewer e-mail distractions.

So the Progressive Managers Network and Realise Development now have new homes in the real world at Unit 35, Unity Business Centre, 26 Roundhay Rd, Leeds, LS7 1AB.

The office is small (but perfectly formed) and well equipped with whiteboards, flip charts, an inspirational library,  and good coffee.

So if you want to drop by for a conversation about how to improve management and leadership, or any other aspect of organisational development and performance improvement you would be very welcome.

Mike Chitty

0113 2167782

What Could a Management Makeover Do for You?

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Here is a ‘Management Makeover’ recipe to improve organisational culture and performance – fast.

  • Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of communication throughout the organisation. Do this through effective 121s, team meetings, project meetings and ‘skip level’ meetings. Train people to make these meetings REALLY work. Make sure that the communication regime works both ways – that managers listen as well as they talk.
  • Significantly increase the quality, quantity and frequency of feedback in the organisation. Train everyone how to give, receive and act on feedback. Train managers how to escalate feedback if it is not acted on effectively. Once everyone knows how their performance is perceived, what is working well and what needs further development, they will start to develop – fast. Make feedback a part of every day work – not a quarterly event!
  • Train every manager to coach every member of their team, every week, to improve their performance. Use coaching to establish learning firmly in the workplace and focus it on providing a better service. A weekly coaching routine provides a great tempo to learning and performance improvement. Train managers to use coaching for performance improvement – helping good people to become great. However also equip them to coach under-performers – if necessary as part of a formal performance process.
  • Train managers to delegate prodigiously. Train them to use delegation as a tool to provide opportunities for those who are hungry to learn and develop their contribution to the organisation. Use delegation, supported by coaching, feedback and great communication to significantly increase the capacity of your organisation.

Communication, Feedback, Coaching and Delegation. Managers who do these four things consistently well stand head and shoulders above their peers. Their teams perform better and keep improving.

All four are relatively easy to learn – requiring more commitment, courage and discipline than skill. For most people a three hour training session on each gives them the basics. They then just need to practice and learn perhaps with some additional advice and support along the way. The challenge in implementing this ‘Management Make’ over is in developing a new set of management habits. And this takes, time, courage and discipline.

But don’t rush it. If this recipe is going to work managers need time to develop and put into practice what they have learned.

Start with better communication through 121s. As soon as 121s have bedded down, after 4-6 weeks introduce training on feedback. Let this have a month to bed in before developing coaching, and a further month before training in delegation.

Within 6 months you will have transformed the culture and performance of your organisation. And this Management Makeover will be much more than skin deep.