7IC People Management
Eagles, Ducks, and Development
11/August/10
Foster Development and Growth
Essential Practices for Managing People... session 7
If you want people to be the best, then help them be better!
Conventional wisdom says don’t send a duck to eagle school. For that matter, you also shouldn’t send an eagle to swimming lessons, or a fish to basketball camp. But you DO want to foster development and growth for all your people.
This 7 minute session provides uncommon insight about avoiding the biggest mistake most organizations make in developing their people, along with essential strategies for providing your people with development and growth experiences that make a difference - to their future, and the future of your organization.
click the image below to hear this week’s coaching session
see the executive summary article for the Practices for Managing People series
Additional Resources
Leadership Development Tools Empowerment Readiness
7 Ideas Coach is a weekly series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders
Get 7 Ideas Coach each week via email or through Apple iTunes
|
Bridge Across Silos and Walls
05/August/10
Essential
Practices for Managing People... session 6
Especially in a knowledge-based world, people
need to have effective communication within and
without their unit, their company, and their
industry.
Here’s a hit...making use of good technology is not
the same as engaging in good communication.
This 7 Ideas Coach session provides uncommon insight
about what you can do as a manager to create an
environment where your people communicate
effectively. Break down silos, increase alignment,
and create an environment that encourages effective
communication....now!
Link to Success
18/July/10
Essential
Practices for Managing People... session 5Extraordinary managers help their people see how work efforts impact the greater good.
Do this well and you help bring out best performance.
Fail to make this link and you not only miss a motivation opportunity, you risk people focusing on doing their job even when that job isn’t relevant to the organization’s goals.
This 7 Ideas Coach session provides uncommon insight into the practice of making visible how the efforts of your people contribute to organizational success.
Read More...
Master Performance Feedback
13/July/10
Essential Practices for Managing People... session 4
If you want your people to be champions at what they do, then performance feedback is essential...let me repeat, essential.
This week’s “coachcast” explores what managers need to do in order to master the two “flavors” of feedback, and use performance feedback to create and sustain champion organizations.
Read More...
Match Assignments to Strengths
08/July/10
Essential
Practices for Managing People... session 3You don’t rise above mediocrity, you don’t become an exceptional performer, by doing everything well enough. You do so by investing in what you already do exceptionally well to keep getting better. Likewise as a manager, if you want exceptional performance from your people, you invest your attention in understanding what your people do well, and matching this to their role in the organization.
This week’s “coachcast” explores how managers can identify the unique strengths of the people they work with, to match these strengths to organizational needs... Read More...
Enable, Motivate, Empower
02/July/10
Essential
Practices for Managing People... session 2What’s the value you add as a manager? Sometimes value is very tangible, only because of something you do that your people now are able to do their work. Much of the time, the value you create is intangible - as in providing motivation - although the impact on results is very real.
This week’s “coachcast” explores the paradoxical nature of motivation, and offers seven ideas for enabling, motivating, and empowering the people you work with...
Read More...
Communicating Expectations
17/June/10
Essential
Practices for Managing People... session 1
People have a mind of their own. It’s unleashing that mind of their own which makes people so valuable in organizations, and what makes managing people so challenging. One of the most essential practices of managing people is communicating expectations. The more expectations are clarified, the more people can apply themselves effectively.
After exploring what a manager needs to know and be able to do to communicate expectations, this session outlines seven essential things a managers will want their people to understand.
Read More...
People have a mind of their own. It’s unleashing that mind of their own which makes people so valuable in organizations, and what makes managing people so challenging. One of the most essential practices of managing people is communicating expectations. The more expectations are clarified, the more people can apply themselves effectively.
After exploring what a manager needs to know and be able to do to communicate expectations, this session outlines seven essential things a managers will want their people to understand.
Read More...
Essential Practices for Managing People
03/June/10
Managing
People...
overview coaching session
click the image below to hear this week’s coaching session
7 Ideas Coach is a weekly series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders
Get 7 Ideas Coach each week via email or through Apple iTunes
THINK! Subscribers Receive the
PDF Version FREE
7 Essential Practices to Bring Out Best Performance and Achieve Results
Managing is a fundamental dimension of leadership. Simply defined, managing is organizing people, processes, and things to achieve established goals. Relative to organizing processes and things, many find managing people to be a mysterious art fraught with seemingly unlimited challenges.
With good reason - between people, processes and things, it is people that have the widest range of unpredictability. When you arrange the furniture in your office, it tends to stay put. People, on the other hand, have a mind of their own. It’s that mind of their own that allows them to make greater contributions to your organization than you might ever expect - or create problems and headaches you never imagined.
Many organizations have grown beyond trying to make people into machines, they value the creativity, passion, and brainpower that people contribute, and therefore recognize good people management as essential. However, these same organizations often overvalue personality and positive individual qualities (e.g. friendliness, determination, open-mindedness, etc.) as drivers of good people management, and don’t really understand what good people managers actually DO beyond achieving functional goals or keeping up morale. Yes, an awareness of one’s own personality as differentiated from others and development of positive interpersonal qualities both significantly impact how well one manages people. However good people management also involves specific practices.
Whether you are in a high “command-and-control” organization, a formal corporate office setting, among professional peers, leading a cross-matrixed team, or coordinating volunteers for a non-profit event, the essential tasks you must do to manage people well to achieve organizational goals are essentially the same. Master these tasks, and you create an environment where people contribute their best.
The following are seven essential practices that, conducted with good interpersonal skill and in the context of sound organizational structures and planning, bring out the best that people have to offer.
communicate expectations
Communicate what the person is supposed to accomplish and the parameters they must follow. Provide relevant information about current processes and any anticipated changes. Remember communication needs to be ongoing, with lots of “contacts” if the person needs to understand and work with a substantial body of information.
enable and empower action
Facilitate people acquiring needed resources, tools, materials, and equipment they need to do their work. This is where you connect the logistical side of management, organizing processes and things, to the human side - the people who need to use those processes and things. Empowerment at its most basic form is clarity about permissions - what actions can people expect to do on their own, relative to actions that require more direct supervision or coaching.
match assignments to strengths
This practice has three components. The first is understanding a person’s strengths and personal goals. The second, is understanding the organization’s needs. The third, is putting these together to leverage results. It’s easy for people to give their best when their assignments are congruent with both what they are good at doing and want to do.
provide performance feedback
This practice answers the question, “how am I doing against expectations?” Provide regular performance feedback to the worker, both positive and constructive, as close to the time they are doing it as possible. If the only feedback is an annual performance review (or being yelled at when something goes wrong) then you are missing the boat big time.
link contributions to success
Great managers not only communicate how someone is performing, but also how that person’s effort contributes to the overall success of the organization. Don’t assume it’s obvious, articulate how this particular person’s work advances the mission, vision, and cause of the organization.
facilitate communication across boundaries
Facilitate the interface and communication between people inside and outside of the unit and organization. Your people are not only communicating with you, but with each other, with peers and colleagues across organizational boundaries, with customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. Be an active force to facilitate that communication, open channels, and help resolve miscommunications.
foster development and growth
Help people connect to opportunities where they can learn, develop, and grow. Deep understanding of both what the organization is trying to accomplish and what the individuals goals are, then matching those to growth opportunities creates the greatest “bang for the buck.”
click the image below to hear this week’s coaching session
7 Ideas Coach is a weekly series of coaching sessions,
7 nuggets of insight in 7 minutes for busy leaders
Get 7 Ideas Coach each week via email or through Apple iTunes
THINK! Subscribers Receive the
PDF Version FREE
7 Essential Practices to Bring Out Best Performance and Achieve Results
Managing is a fundamental dimension of leadership. Simply defined, managing is organizing people, processes, and things to achieve established goals. Relative to organizing processes and things, many find managing people to be a mysterious art fraught with seemingly unlimited challenges.
With good reason - between people, processes and things, it is people that have the widest range of unpredictability. When you arrange the furniture in your office, it tends to stay put. People, on the other hand, have a mind of their own. It’s that mind of their own that allows them to make greater contributions to your organization than you might ever expect - or create problems and headaches you never imagined.
Many organizations have grown beyond trying to make people into machines, they value the creativity, passion, and brainpower that people contribute, and therefore recognize good people management as essential. However, these same organizations often overvalue personality and positive individual qualities (e.g. friendliness, determination, open-mindedness, etc.) as drivers of good people management, and don’t really understand what good people managers actually DO beyond achieving functional goals or keeping up morale. Yes, an awareness of one’s own personality as differentiated from others and development of positive interpersonal qualities both significantly impact how well one manages people. However good people management also involves specific practices.
Whether you are in a high “command-and-control” organization, a formal corporate office setting, among professional peers, leading a cross-matrixed team, or coordinating volunteers for a non-profit event, the essential tasks you must do to manage people well to achieve organizational goals are essentially the same. Master these tasks, and you create an environment where people contribute their best.
The following are seven essential practices that, conducted with good interpersonal skill and in the context of sound organizational structures and planning, bring out the best that people have to offer.
communicate expectations
Communicate what the person is supposed to accomplish and the parameters they must follow. Provide relevant information about current processes and any anticipated changes. Remember communication needs to be ongoing, with lots of “contacts” if the person needs to understand and work with a substantial body of information.
enable and empower action
Facilitate people acquiring needed resources, tools, materials, and equipment they need to do their work. This is where you connect the logistical side of management, organizing processes and things, to the human side - the people who need to use those processes and things. Empowerment at its most basic form is clarity about permissions - what actions can people expect to do on their own, relative to actions that require more direct supervision or coaching.
match assignments to strengths
This practice has three components. The first is understanding a person’s strengths and personal goals. The second, is understanding the organization’s needs. The third, is putting these together to leverage results. It’s easy for people to give their best when their assignments are congruent with both what they are good at doing and want to do.
provide performance feedback
This practice answers the question, “how am I doing against expectations?” Provide regular performance feedback to the worker, both positive and constructive, as close to the time they are doing it as possible. If the only feedback is an annual performance review (or being yelled at when something goes wrong) then you are missing the boat big time.
link contributions to success
Great managers not only communicate how someone is performing, but also how that person’s effort contributes to the overall success of the organization. Don’t assume it’s obvious, articulate how this particular person’s work advances the mission, vision, and cause of the organization.
facilitate communication across boundaries
Facilitate the interface and communication between people inside and outside of the unit and organization. Your people are not only communicating with you, but with each other, with peers and colleagues across organizational boundaries, with customers, vendors, and other stakeholders. Be an active force to facilitate that communication, open channels, and help resolve miscommunications.
foster development and growth
Help people connect to opportunities where they can learn, develop, and grow. Deep understanding of both what the organization is trying to accomplish and what the individuals goals are, then matching those to growth opportunities creates the greatest “bang for the buck.”
***
by Tom Stevens (c)2010
Tom Stevens helps leaders create and sustain
exceptional organizations. To contact him, visit
www.ThinkLeadershipIdeas.com
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