Should managers worry what others think of them?

I’ve a confession to make.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessing about how I come across to other people.  At times it’s felt like a return to adolescence, when I worried endlessly about whether I’d been noticed by those I most wanted to impress, or if in fact they were sniggering behind my back at my clumsy efforts to fit in.  It’s not something I find natural or indeed very comfortable; it’s even felt as if I was at risk of undermining years of work building a self-esteem independent of anyone else’s approval. 

Am I having yet another mid-life crisis?  Am I undergoing therapy?  No, I’m just reviewing my brand as a management coach.

There’s something about the idea of personal branding that sits uncomfortably with many of us, that is if it registers in our consciousness at all.  After all, branding is something that organisations do, or rather is done to them; to do it to an individual seems to be treating them like some kind of commodity, and unless you’re a minor celebrity craving publicity it’s a vanity that should be avoided at all costs.

For many people, part of the transition out of adolescent insecurity is the ‘I am what I am’ phase, pushing your emerging adult personality into everyone’s face at every possible opportunity without worrying what they think of you.  Fortunately, this is usually followed by the realisation that you can still be true to yourself while adjusting how you present yourself depending on the situation.  For most of us, it doesn’t even take much conscious effort to alter which aspects of our personality we project depending on whether we’re with our friends down the pub or with elderly relatives.

Sometimes however, this realisation comes after some much needed feedback or a period of self-reflection. I remember working with a young graduate management trainee who insisted that she should be able to wear to work the short skirts and low necklines that were part of her normal style.  After a few months, she recognised that because of her youth and inexperience she already had a tough enough job establishing her managerial credibility, without adding to her challenges by the way she dressed. 

Personal branding isn’t about changing who you fundamentally are, it’s the art of presenting a clear consistent image that promotes the message you want to put across.  It’s also about you taking control of how you’re perceived rather than leaving it to accident or other people who may not necessarily have your best interests at heart.  On the BBC Radio 4 programme Today earlier this month, I heard a discussion about the latest cabinet reshuffle.  Former Member of Parliament James Purnell gave the following piece of advice to the new cabinet members: ‘you need to create a caricature of yourself, or a frame through which the rest of Westminster can interpret what you are trying to do before the media or the opposition does’.

Although your personal brand may be an exaggerated, even slightly idealised version of who you are, the real challenge is to make sure your day-to-day behaviour lives up to the image as closely as possible, strengthening rather than undermining it.  If this isn’t the case, it would be easy to dismiss branding as being all about cosmetic change, a clear case of putting lipstick on a pig.   What branding is actually about is identifying and promoting your authentic self, celebrating your unique pigginess without the need for disguise.

 

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner.  He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while.  More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

The latest MBA: Management By App

One of things I’ve discovered since I started blogging and tweeting is how much I enjoy reading what other people have to say for themselves.  One of the sites I regularly visit is Inc. - it’s guaranteed to provide something of interest and I frequently tweet links to their articles.

For me, the best kind of article is not one that I necessarily agree with, but one that gets me all fired up, sending me off to jot down notes for a potential blog post of my own.  And that’s exactly what happened when I read 5 Brilliant People Management Tools.  The title itself was enough to make me curious, despite my growing weariness of posts with numbers in the title.  The opening sentence was also promising: ‘the formative years of any company have more to do with whom you hire and how you manage them than just about any other factor’. 

But then what happened?  There followed a list of the latest web tools designed to help you manage ‘essential HR and people management tasks’.  If how you manage people is so essential to the success of a new enterprise, somehow reducing it to a series of tasks that can be handled by the odd app or two doesn’t feel like you’ve really grasped how important it actually is. 

Now, I’m as much of a sucker for an elegant bit of software as the next person, and given that the author of this article writes about technical trends, his perspective is hardly surprising.  The problem I have has nothing to do with the use of web tools to manage certain processes – it’s about reducing people management to a series of processes in the first place. 

Process is important (it can for example help ensure compliance to employment legislation) but it is not the be all and end all.  As I’ve suggested before in one of my management clichés series, downgrading management to the administration of company process, policy and procedure can stifle a manager’s ability to motivate, inspire and engage people.  In the formative stages of any new enterprise, it is a manager’s leadership skills that will have the biggest impact on the performance of their people, not their ability to master the latest people management app.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

No-one could ever call me perfect

It’s Monday morning and I’ve started the week as I mean to go on – being human! 

I sent out a routine email asking people coming to a meeting later this week to confirm their attendance.  Only after I had sent it did I realise that I had accidentally inserted one person’s name into the subject bar.  This gave the impression that they were for some reason being singled out.  I hope my quick apologetic follow-up email corrected any misunderstanding and injected a bit of humour into the start of the week, allowing everyone to get on with far more important matters.

This got me thinking about how the need to be perfect can be very disabling.  There have been times when I’ve worried over how to improve a piece of work to such an extent that I’ve invested far more hours than could possibly be justified.  I’d be embarrassed to confess how long I work on some of these blog entries before I’m satisfied enough to publish them - how I envy people who appear to be able to write effortless articles every day.

In my experience, Managers who need to be perfect are often hugely ineffective.  Their anxiety over making mistakes dominates everything.   Whether it’s about their own performance or that of their team members, their focus is primarily on what’s wrong at the expense of what’s right.  Not only is this extremely demotivating and leads to time being wasted trying in vain to eradicate all imperfections (or over-apologising if something slips through the net), the fear of even partial failure stifles creativity.

Being able to balance an eye for detail with an appreciation of what’s really important involves a sense of perspective.  Of course there are times when complete accuracy is vital; there are also times when it isn’t.  Most people are very forgiving of signs of humanity – in fact they quite like them.  For example, there’s something bland about a presentation that’s overly polished; far more engaging is one where the audience can see the presenter’s individuality and even their imperfections. 

So, at the risk of being accused of occasional carelessness, I will not be spending this or any other week putting excessive effort into trying to achieve perfection.  One of areas where I regularly come up against my own fallibility, is the challenge I face when writing these posts to craft a satisfactory (if less than perfect) ending.   Today, I will overcome this with two quotes from two very different sources:

‘I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.

Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.’
Michael J Fox

 ‘Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without’

The Analects of Confucius

 

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk



Not Just a Bunch of Wallflowers

Suddenly it seems almost fashionable to be an introvert.  Books, articles and lectures are popping up all over the place about the strengths they bring to organisations, and advice on how introverts can manage their careers seems to be becoming more sophisticated than the “pretend to be an extravert” message I’ve heard all my life. 

I’m not sure however just how far the traditional stereotypes have been broken down yet.  Mention introversion to many people, and they still think this means shy, awkward, anti-social individuals who are far less fun to be with than their outgoing, party-loving extraverted counterparts.  Most people know little about the psychological use of the terms as proposed by Carl Jung and the Myers-Briggs mother-daughter combo, for whom the difference between introversion and extraversion was not about how sociable or gregarious people are, but about whether it’s the internal or external world where they focus their attention and get their energy. 

According to the Myers-Briggs research, introverts make up about half the adult population; yet the business world still seems to have a bias in favour of extraverts.  If we take the critical management skill of networking as an example, many events and conferences place the emphasis on cramming in as much activity and meeting as many people as possible in a short space of time, which works well for extraverts but is not so great for introverts.  In recognition of this, a lot of advice is available showing introverts how to “work a room” and use these events successfully. 

On closer inspection however, some of the advice is not really about networking for introverts at all; it’s more about networking for beginners or for shy people.  Of course this can be invaluable if you are a newcomer to networking or are indeed shy, but for introverts it can sometimes be rather patronising.  It also usually boils down to tips on how to behave more like an extravert, and while this is an option, this is too close to the “fake it ‘til you make it” school of thought for comfort.  Being fake is not exactly a good starting point for getting to know people, establishing trust and developing sustainable business relationships.

Introverts need to be authentic to their own strengths rather than feel pressurised to adopt extravert behaviours.  Yes, introverts can and do learn a lot from extraverts, but then again extraverts have a lot to learn from introverts.  At the very least, it makes sense for extraverts to learn how to do business in a way that doesn’t exclude and possibly alienate half their potential contacts and customers.

 

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Unstoppable Leadership

I recently had a Twitter conversation that started like this:

JamesYatesUSD: What does being UNSTOPPABLE mean to you what does it allow you to do?

BetterMgr: Being unstoppable would allow me to do anything - is that a good thing? Definitely better than being unstartable though.

Being a persistent man, James went on to ask ‘what makes you unstoppable?’ and this sent my thoughts off into realms way beyond the possibilities of the odd tweet. 

In many ways I conform to the stereotype of the typical Brit, trained from an early age to be sceptical, with an inbuilt mechanism to keep excessive positive thinking in check.  The capacity to believe I could be unstoppable is just not part of my DNA, while voices in my head consistently warn me of the dangers of unbridled optimism.  So in order to explore what unstoppability might mean, and in particular what unstoppable leadership looks like, I need to put aside my natural tendency to regard such gung-ho concepts with suspicion, and temporarily silence my persistent inner naysayers.

Unstoppability seems to require three things: a compelling vision, the ability to take decisive action and the knack of remaining motivated in the face of set-backs.  Without a compelling vision, being unstoppable is not a particularly useful or desirable leadership quality.   A runaway train hurtles on regardless, causing havoc and crushing those that get in its way.  This kind of unstoppability in a leader often encourages people either to step back and wait for them to crash or run out of fuel (as they inevitably will) or to plan ways of derailing them.  A compelling shared vision on the other hand brings others on board and adds to the overall momentum.

The ability to weigh up available options and take decisive action is an important component of unstoppability.  While some people find that too many options, different perspectives or missing information leads to inertia, the unstoppable leader sifts through the contradictions and makes a decision anyway.  This is where a wise leader listens closely to their inner critical voices, or better still surrounds themselves with people who are not afraid of putting forward alternative views or pointing out the risks involved.  Being decisive is good, making informed decisions is better.  

The real test comes when obstacles start to present themselves.  The truly unstoppable leader remains motivated when things go wrong; they see challenges not problems, and find barriers energising not draining.  A certain amount of flexibility is essential, keeping the vision pure but recognising that there are various ways of achieving it. 

In answer to James’ original question therefore about what unstoppable means to me, I have to confess that it all depends what vocabulary my inner voices have chosen to use today.  On a bad day, it is synonymous with stubbornness, obstinacy, inflexibility and downright pig-headedness – qualities I have been taught to shun from an early age.   But then a little voice pipes up from somewhere to remind me that one person’s intransigence is another’s tenacity, determination and steadfastness, qualities that even the most dyed-in-the-wool Brit can embrace if not with passion (another alien concept) at least with a modicum of enthusiasm.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Half-baked managers fail to pass on their skills

Let me start by confessing how much I enjoy food.  I enjoy watching programmes about it, reading about it, anticipating it, cooking it and yes, I love eating it.  So, it was inevitable that sooner or later food would somehow creep into my writing about management. 

Two food-related things happened recently that got me thinking about why managers don’t pass their skills on to their staff.  The first was reading the article A National Tragedy - What Teens Aren't Being Taught.  In this, the author Denny Coates said that despite being a gourmet cook, his mother-in-law had not taught his wife how to make even the simplest meal.  The second was watching one of my guilty pleasures, Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA.  In this particular episode (season 5, episode 7), a father seemed reluctant to teach his son how to cook in the family-run Greek restaurant. 

We can only speculate why the mother did not pass on her culinary skills, as the reasons were not explored in the article.  Perhaps she didn’t want her daughter to encroach on her territory, or maybe the daughter felt no need to learn because her mother always did the cooking.  As for the father/son scenario, in true Kitchen Nightmares’ tradition, it took a lot of drama and an emotional showdown before we discovered that both parents felt their son lacked commitment following a monumentally insensitive comment he’d made several years before.

In management, failure to pass on skills or develop staff in other ways is a recipe for disaster.  Managers end up working themselves into the ground, becoming less and less effective; staff become increasingly dissatisfied, with the best leaving to find somewhere that will provide them with opportunities for growth; and organisations end up stagnating, relying on a limited pool of expertise and failing to keep up with the competition.

In many ways, the reasons why managers fail to develop staff are often the same ones that explain their failure to delegate.  Some of these are very logical: when you’re busy, it’s quicker to do something yourself than take time to explain what’s needed and provide the necessary ongoing support; and when the quality of the outcome is important, it’s safer to do it yourself than risk disaster by handing over to someone without the necessary skills.  Sometimes your doubts about the commitment or attitude of the people you manage may be entirely justified.

There could however be other factors at play: you enjoy doing whatever it is and don’t want any disruptions; you enjoy the feeling of being indispensable; you’re a control freak who can’t bear not to be involved; you fear your staff may actually turn out to be better than you; you’re afraid that if they become more skilled they’ll leave.   

Whatever your reasons for failing to develop your staff, it’s worth remembering that teaching other people to cook doesn’t diminish your skills in any way.  It allows you to be more selective about when you do so, keeping you fresh for those special occasions when your particular signature dish is required, and giving you time to experiment with new recipes.  And as your protégés gain skill, they will bring exciting new dishes to the table, ideas you never dreamed of but which enhance your reputation as well as theirs.

All these food metaphors have made me hungry – anyone for a little snack?

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

I’m really not very interested in your feedback at the moment, thank you

There’s a lot written about how to make feedback constructive.  It is, or at least should be, one of the first things new managers learn.  But sometimes, even the most well-considered comments fall on deaf ears or provoke an unexpectedly strong reaction.

Several years ago, I invited a builder round to size up various jobs around the house.  There were many reasons why I decided to reject his proposal, and although I could have just said I wasn’t interested, I felt he would want to know why – after all customer feedback helps businesses improve the service they offer.  

I spent a long time crafting my email, taking into consideration all the usual things said about how to make feedback constructive.  Rather than just passing judgement, I described the specific things I didn’t like about his proposal and the way he had communicated with me; I tried my best to balance the positive with the negative; and I referred only to things that were in his power to change.

With hindsight, it seems obvious that his response would be less than positive.  The strength of his reaction however is what makes it stick in my mind.  It consisted of a tirade of insults about the tiny hovel I called home, my prissy attitude and my complete lack of understanding about how hard things were for him. 

The builder’s less-than-constructive comments on my feedback taught me a number of important lessons.   With feedback, it’s not just what you say, or even how you say it.  You have to get your timing spot and you have to earn the right to give feedback as well. 

The timing of feedback is crucial.  No-one is going to hear what you have to say if they are distracted, tired or emotional.   It is always easier to judge this when giving face-to-face verbal feedback.  You can see their reaction and adjust what you want to say, or even decide to come back another time.   Sometimes however we have to provide feedback over the phone or in writing, when it is harder to assess and control the timing.  Although you may not know whether it’s a good time, you can always ask first and then only proceed if given the green light. 

It’s easy to think that being a manager or a customer automatically gives you the right to provide feedback.  While to some extent is does, people are more likely to listen when feedback comes from someone where a degree of trust has already been established.  If the relationship is poor or non-existent, the feedback may prompt some knee-jerk reaction but is unlikely to lead to any real behaviour change. 

When I provided feedback to the builder, my relationship with him was not strong enough to give me the right to launch straight into detail.  It also became clear that my email arrived at just the wrong moment, when he was struggling with domestic problems as well as a mountain of work.  If I had simply informed him that I was not going to accept his proposal, adding that I was happy to explain why if he wanted, perhaps he might have been more interested in what I had to say; perhaps not.   

Feedback is sometimes referred to as a ‘gift’ that the person on the receiving end can do with what they like.  Forcing an unwanted gift on someone however is perverse; it’s not just a pointless exercise, but says far more about the giver’s needs than their regard for the recipient.  Don’t do it, or like me you may end up on the wrong end of some well-deserved, old fashioned abuse.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Save Us from Leadership Conformity!

It would seem ridiculous to argue that one style of leadership is superior to all others.  Different situations require different approaches, and most people accept that organisations actually benefit from diversity.   But just how different can someone be, or do we still have a very narrow perception of what it takes to be a leader?

Gender is one area where difference regularly gets debated, particularly the difference in working styles that men and women offer.   Certain traits are regularly identified as being masculine and others as feminine.  In a recent article, How to Negotiate like a Woman, Susannah Breslin claims ‘when it comes to work, I’m more like a man than a woman.  I’m aggressive, competitive, and cut-throat’.   There is however a well-argued case that being more participatory, non-hierarchical, flexible and group-oriented, qualities traditionally associated with women, is exactly what modern organisations need. 

Whenever there is an attempt to discuss an imbalance such as the predominance of men at the top of major organisations, there is a risk that appearing to argue the merits of those currently in the majority will attract condemnation.   The ever-readable Dan Rockwell identifies that while it seems OK to talk about Where Women Leaders are Better than Men, there is something uncomfortable if not inherently dangerous in discussing Where Men Leaders are Better than Women.

Other areas of leadership difference occasionally capture the imagination, such as the current discussion about the strengths that introverts offer.  Susan Cain for example makes a compelling case for the quiet and contemplative in her passionate TED talk.  This all certainly makes a change from the message most introverts have heard throughout their lives that if they want to get on, especially in leadership roles, they need to become more extrovert. 

It is encouraging that these debates raise important issues about the benefits of some forms of diversity, even if there is still a long way to go.  The problem however is that the focus is often on relatively simple differences such as male/female or extroversion/introversion.  More complex distinctions such as cultural difference are less widely discussed, presumably because they do not lend themselves quite as readily to simple generalisations. 

It is perhaps this tendency to generalise, to place things in neat simple categories, that limits our view of leadership.  The steady stream of articles, blogs and tweets listing the traits or behaviours shared by successful leaders only serves to encourage sameness rather than diversity.   The underlying message seems to be ‘develop these particular characteristics and you too can be successful’.  

While it may be interesting to know what certain leaders have in common, there is far less written that celebrates their individuality, except in the case of a handful of maverick entrepreneurs.  Within most organisations, being too different seriously limits an individual’s prospects.  If we really believe that diversity enriches an organisation, we need to develop a broader vision of leadership, embracing people who fail to conform to our existing and rather narrow models.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

What’s missing from most job application packs?

You want to attract the best possible candidates for your vacancy.  You’ve prepared a detailed job description and person specification.  You’ve put together an attractive reward and benefits package.  You’ve included information about the organisation, its strategic vision, culture and achievements (or have this information easily accessible on the company website).  You’ve highlighted the exciting career prospects and development opportunities available to staff.  What could you possibly have forgotten?

There comes a stage in most people’s careers where the whole interview and selection process becomes a two-way thing.  It’s not just about the organisation choosing who they want to employ; job seekers also have their own list of essential and desirable factors that make for the ideal employer.  Job details are clearly important, as is information about the organisation and the context in which the job operates.  What tends to be missing, and is hard for job seekers to find for themselves, is information about the person who will be managing them.   There’s sometimes an indication of the job title, but unless this is a very senior post, it’s often nigh on impossible to find out much about the actual person.

It has been said that people leave managers not organisations; is it so unthinkable therefore that job hunters may want more than the briefest information about the one person who potentially has the power to make their working life a genuinely rewarding experience or a complete nightmare?  Is the opportunity to ask a few questions at the end of an interview really enough to reassure the applicant that they aren’t entrusting the future of their career to a complete psychopath?

It might perhaps be a step too far to expect the recruiting manager to complete an application form of the applicants’ own design (questions might include staff turnover rates, average number of sick days taken by team members and the amount per head invested in their development); similarly managers may be reluctant to provide references from two people they have managed.   At the very least however, the manager’s name should be provided, accompanied by a brief career history and perhaps the link to their LinkedIn profile. 

As a recruiter, you wouldn’t rely on sketchy information and trust to make such an important decision as who to appoint to your vacancy.  Why then do you think a job applicant would be satisfied with knowing next to nothing about the person who possibly has the most significant influence over the success or otherwise of their next career move?

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk



Five Great Articles About Bad Bosses

Talk to most people who have worked for any length of time, and they will have a bad boss story.  It seems that bad bosses are everywhere.  Perhaps it is just that the bad experiences stick in the memory, while good management is taken for granted and only exceptional cases get noticed.

No-one sets out to be a bad manager.  This collection of great articles highlights the consequences of getting things wrong and provides guidance on becoming a better manager.

1.     The Costs of Mistreating Employees by Frank Sonnenberg

Frank Sonnenberg is author of Managing with a Conscience: How to Improve Performance Through Integrity, Trust, and Commitment.  In this post he identifies the potential consequences of treating employees badly

2.     How to utterly destroy an employee’s work life by Tersea Amabile and Steven Kramer

Based on a long-term research project, the authors identify four ways that managers can leave you frustrated, unmotivated by the job

3.     Top 10 Excuses for Being a Lousy Manager by Dan McCarthy

Bad bosses often have a hard time taking ownership for their flaws.  Here are some of the most common excuses managers use to justify their behaviour

4.     Are you a bad boss? 7 Management Moves to Avoid

Inc. identifies seven of the ugliest management tactics in the business world, along with better ways to handle the challenges

5.     What Are Good Things About Having A Lousy Boss? by Bob Sutton

The author of Good Boss, Bad Boss brings the positive side of having a bad boss. 

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Empowerment – fool’s gold or the real thing?

Over the years, the term empowerment has become part of everyday management language.  It has all the hallmarks of a winning concept: by giving individuals greater control over decisions that affect their work, they feel more engaged and fulfilled, and at the same time productivity and quality improve.  What’s not to love?

On closer inspection however, there’s a faint whiff of snake oil about the whole thing, managers giving back what they took away in the first place.  While of course there are individuals who find problem-solving and decision-making difficult at the best of times, many have no problem with these at all.  So, what robbed people of their natural abilities, and instilled in them instead a sense of learned helplessness? 

Empowerment is not just about adding vitality to a flagging workforce, with the implication that it is the workforce that needs to be fixed.  There is something rather patronising about a manager acting as Lord or Lady Bountiful bestowing on their people the power to use their own judgement, provided they stay well within the clearly defined limits of their pay grade. 

As well as thinking about how to empower staff therefore, managers should be focusing on eliminating the ways in which the organisation actively disempowers them.  There is little point introducing empowerment measures unless these are accompanied by a thorough overhaul of the organisational structures, policies and procedures that prevent individuals from using their judgement.   Without a culture where trust is clearly demonstrated, risk is acceptable and blame avoided, empowerment is likely to become yet another idea that sounds good in theory but achieves little in practice.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk



Five Great Management and Leadership Blogs

Over the last week, I have read many great blogs on leadership and management.  Here is a selection of ones that particularly caught my eye.

Conquering a Leadership Paradox by Kevin Eikenberry

When someone is promoted to a management position, it is likely this isn’t as a full-time manager/leader, regardless of what the job description says.  They still have other work to do too. It is likely these responsibilities are more closely connected to the individual’s past comfort level and expertise (using the skills that got them the promotion in the first place).

The Top 10 Reasons Lying Will Corrode Your Self-Esteem by Steven Berglas

The Russians have a saying: “With lies you may get ahead in the world – but you can never go back,”  What liars are not aware of is that using deceit to “make it” is the easy part; it’s staying on top that is hard, and enjoying one’s success, long-term, is hardest of all.

Counterfeit Leadership by Frank Sonnenberg

How do you spot a counterfeit leader? These are the individuals who spend much of their time playing politics, protecting their turf, and promoting their self-interests instead of addressing difficult issues, making tough decisions, and introducing the change that’s required to achieve long-term success.

Nine Reasons Managers Struggle by Michael McKinney

Former CEO and president of Verizon Wireless, Denny Strigl explores nine specific behaviours that leaders do and don’t do that make them serious performers, marginal performers, or failures.

The Joy of Leadership by Jon Mertz

If you are leading in a way consistent with your values system, then the expression of this consistency will shine through in your interactions and actions with others.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Management clichés: management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things

Like most clichés, Peter Drucker’s much quoted distinction between management and leadership, has lost its original impact and to some extent meaning through repetition and being taken out of context.  In a recent interview in the New York Times, a successful entrepreneur and former senior executive at Dell, Microsoft and Apple described Drucker’s aphorism in a somewhat alarming way.  Admitting that he thought he was a lousy manager but a pretty good leader, he depicted management as ‘dotting the Is, crossing the Ts, giving reviews, doing all the HR stuff’, while leadership requires understanding of the broader context, which may lead to decisions contrary to company policy.  

This seems to be a rather impoverished view of what management is about, reducing it to little more than administering company policies and procedures.  Is that really what organisations expect and need from their managers?

Over the years, much has been written about the differences between leadership and management, resulting in a proliferation of conflicting opinions and models.  Leadership has perhaps become associated with high-status activities to do with strategy, change and innovation, while management is seen to be much more mundane, concerned with operational implementation issues.  While having a distinction may be useful in that it promotes greater understanding of the range of perspectives needed to run an organisation successfully, the problem arises when people try to separate leadership and management into distinct activities undertaken by completely different people.   

Management involves much more than just administering company policies; to use another of Drucker’s observations, “management’s concern and management’s responsibility are everything that affects the performance of the institution”.  In order to help the organisation achieve its strategic goals, managers must have an in-depth understanding of the broader context, and possess the ability to challenge existing ways of doing things.  So although management includes ‘doing all the HR stuff’, this is far from blindly following company policy and ensuring compliance.  It involves considerable leadership skill to motivate, inspire and engage people, which may occasionally mean using judgement to weigh up the risks involved in acting contrary to policy. 

So although it is clear that being a manager requires the use of leadership skills, can a leader be effective without management ability?  Some leaders may concentrate on creating and communicating the vision, while the interpretation and implementation of this, together with the day-to-day management of the organisation, is largely delegated to others.  The way these leaders manage their direct reports may be fundamentally intuitive rather than based on following set procedures.  This approach relies heavily on trust and respect for management, for without these there is a risk that the vision will never be realised and management will be forced into a Cinderella role, while leadership plays the Ugly Sister, full of self-importance and frankly rather ridiculous in its lack of understanding of the practicalities of life. 

Where effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing things right) are both required for success, so are leadership and management, and in most cases, these cannot be divided into completely separate roles undertaken by separate people.   

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

A passion for management

In the past, when children were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, traditional responses would include becoming a doctor, train driver, pilot and even explorer or astronaut.  Our present fascination with celebrity has possibly moved the emphasis more onto becoming famous, whether as a pop-star, actor or perhaps just for being famous. 

In any decade though, it is unlikely that manager would have been any child’s career of choice.  Being a manager is something few aspire towards; it is something people become while doing something else.  Scores of dedicated nurses, enthusiastic IT boffins and successful salespeople take on management responsibility, not because they are passionate about the challenges it offers, but as a way of earning more and progressing their careers.  For others, being a manager is seen as a stepping-stone on the path to greatness – the dues you have to pay if you want to become a senior executive with all the power and perceived glamour that entails. 

Having taken a step onto the management ladder, people often find it is not always a comfortable experience.  They spend less time doing what they love, and more time being caught in the middle of the organisation, blamed by both those above and those below for all its ills. According to research by the Hay Group, many company directors in the UK believe middle management to be the single greatest barrier to achieving company objectives, while dissatisfaction with a manager is a major factor in employees looking for a new job.

Given all of this, it would understandable if people were less than passionate about being a manager; and yet passion is exactly what managers need if they want to succeed.  It takes passion to motivate, engage and get the best out of people, and a passion for success and delivering the organisation’s strategic goals is what senior executives need from their managers.  

It is difficult to be passionate about something if your focus is elsewhere.  Many managers see the people management aspects of their role as interruptions that get in the way of their real work, be that caring for patients, solving some technical problem or closing a sale with a new customer.  Similarly, understanding the wider context of what is happening in the organisation sometimes seems like a distraction that has little to do with the day job. 

Turning irritation into passion takes effort; it starts with paying attention to what’s happening around you and instead of looking for quick fixes, getting curious about what’s creating the problems in the first place.  Curiosity sparks interest, and from here genuine passion can be ignited.  Passionate managers are rare, but hugely influential.  Although being a manager may not have been your first career choice, becoming a passionate one is something to aspire towards.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

While we’re binning appraisal systems, let’s shred the SMART objectives too

Over the years, a compelling case for abandoning the formal performance appraisal system has been established.  Fred Nickols for example argues that it ‘devours staggering amounts of time and energy, depresses and demotivates people, destroys trust and teamwork and, adding insult to injury, it delivers little demonstrable value at great cost’. 

Less has been said on the subject of SMART objectives.   The setting and reviewing objectives is central not just to most appraisal schemes, but also to the wider field of performance management.  For years, managers have been encouraged to make sure objectives are SMART, and yet many fail to do so in one way or another.   While a widespread inability to set SMART objectives is not necessarily a reason for abandoning them altogether, it does raise the question of whether their use is as vital as is often stated.

What was intended as a helpful mnemonic has over time become blurred, with people disagreeing over the numerous versions of what the five letters actually stand for.  The A seems to attract the most variants, including attainable, appropriate, achievable, agreed, assignable, actionable, ambitious, aligned and aspirational.  But even the M, which most people accept stands for measurable, has alternative versions in circulation, including meaningful, motivational and manageable.   Some people favour the longer form SMARTER, adding to the confusion with even more permutations of meaning.  If SMART in itself is open to such wide interpretation, it can hardly be a reliable measure against which to judge objectives.

Another major problem with using SMART is that while it may have some application for something relatively small and self-contained, work often involves a level of complexity that cannot be captured by applying a simple formula.  Where objectives are set as part of a formal appraisal process, there is a temptation to condense them into a single sentence in order to fit the space available in the documentation.  This in effect reduces the objective to little more than a sound bite, which is unlikely to be sufficiently detailed to ensure accountability.

Organisations today face constant change and require people to be increasingly flexible.  Employees need to be much more agile, frequently checking the shifting expectations of a range of interested parties.  The setting and reviewing of simplistic SMART objectives fails to reflect this, particularly when part of an annual ritual of performance appraisal. 

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Workplace distractions

How do you feel about personal use of the internet at work?  Do you suspect staff of wasting huge amounts of time surfing the web or checking their Facebook page? 

A few years ago, a survey by America Online and Salary.com found that personal internet usage was the biggest source of distraction at work (socialising with colleagues came second).  As a way of tackling this problem, many organisations closely monitor employees' internet activity or ban its use during working hours altogether.  After all, many managers feel that watching Fenton the Dog or any other funny video clip on You Tube interrupts real work and should be done at home.  

But does clamping down on such activity actually increase productivity?  Recent research from the Harvard Business School suggests not, and that telling employees to delay their gratification can actually have a negative impact on performance.  In their experiments, the researchers found that those who were told to resist the temptation of watching a funny video made significantly more mistakes on a subsequent task than people who were allowed to watch the video right away.

The researchers suggest that organisations should either eliminate temptation by removing web access entirely or, where this is not possible or practical, allow a certain amount of personal use.  One solution might be to agree to regular short internet breaks, managed in much the same way as are coffee and cigarette breaks.  Although many managers would feel uneasy about giving official sanction to personal internet use at work, it is perhaps worth considering turning a blind eye to all but the most extreme offenders.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk

Management clichés: ‘People are our greatest asset’

This particular cliché is often used in the belief that it demonstrates to employees how much they are valued.  The truth behind its sentiment however is often debatable, and people are not usually taken in for long by nice words if they are not matched by appropriate action.

If we look at the definition of an asset, a completely different interpretation of this phrase emerges. In finance, an asset is any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation, especially one that can be converted into cash.  It would seem therefore that not since the abolition of the slave trade could people literally be considered assets, owned by the organisation, used and then disposed of.  Speaking figuratively, it’s not exactly a positive message, although some staff may consider it an accurate description of the relationship they have with their employers.  

Even when professing that employees are their greatest asset, most managers can identify certain individuals they regard as complete liabilities. This suggests that the phrase does not in fact cover all people; it could also be argued that in most cases it probably doesn’t even mean specific people.  There are few instances where an individual possesses the precise combination of knowledge, skills and expertise that makes them so indispensable that they couldn’t be replaced by someone else.  The phrase might therefore be interpreted as meaning the organisation needs people, but not necessarily you; again, this is hardly likely to increase motivation and engagement.

Like with most clichés, the intended impact of saying people are a company’s most valuable asset has been lost through overuse, and familiarity with the phrase has led if not to contempt at least to indifference.  Managers would do well to think of other ways of saying, or preferably showing, that they value their employees.  Without this, the most capable may well look for somewhere where their talents will be more appreciated, while those that remain may take on another characteristic typical of an asset, namely that their value to the company depreciates over time.

Tim Schuler is a coach, facilitator and business partner. He specialises in bringing out the very best in managers, whether it’s their first management role or something they’ve been doing for a while. More information is available from www.tschuler.co.uk