This week we’re talking about Imposters here at Wily Manager, so I thought I’d do a bit of research on great imposters of note to see if there was anything instructional for the occasional manager that finds herself with a case of Imposter Syndrome.

As I researched famous imposters, there were four names that kept coming up:

• Charles Ponzi (after which any crooked finance scheme since has been named).
• Frank Abagnale Jr. (the guy portrayed by Leo Dicaprio in Catch me if You Can)
• Milli Vanilli (the duo who won a Grammy in the 90s, only to be discovered later as lip-syncers
• George Bush Jr.  (The 43^rd President of the United States)

Most of the managers I’ve talked to who suspect they have a case of Imposter Syndrome are worried because they don’t do stand-up presentations very well.  Or maybe they’re put in charge of a department where they don’t have the technical expertise.

When you compare these managerial challenges to the accomplishments of the list above, you don’t have anything to worry about.  You’re not even in the same league as these guys.  So don’t flatter yourself!

Based on the infamous list above, an imposter is someone who goes out of his way to deceive people; a person who pretends to be someone he is not, and does so with flash.  True imposters have an over-abundance of self-confidence – something most managers with Imposter Syndrome do not.

So… if you’re going to be an imposter, do it with some flair.  Can you take down a whole country’s economy?  Can you start a war?  Can you separate old age pensioners from their life’s savings?  Can you disgrace an entire industry?

If not, you probably don’t have what it takes to be an imposter, so you’ll have to try to find some other way allow your insecurities to manifest themselves.

If it’s any comfort be aware that everyone has some insecurity.  Many years ago when Johnny Carson was the host of the Tonight Show, a heart monitor was put on him to test his anxiety level right before the show started.

As it turns out, even the mighty Carson suffered some anxiety and self-doubt:  his heart rate doubled right before the curtain came up.

If Johnny Carson can be a bit nervous, surely you can too.  And don’t call me Shirley.

How to you self-diagnose and ultimately overcome Imposter Syndrome?  Join Jed & Bob as they discuss this common management ailment.

Watch the ‘Overcoming Imposter Syndrome’ Video (15 mins 01 sec):

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Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Overcoming Imposter Syndrome.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

I was out for lunch recently on a weekend with an old family friend.  Our lunch, on a beautiful autumn afternoon, overlooking the ocean was repeatedly interrupted by a Blackberry – and not the thorny cane-fruit type.  I finally asked if my friend’s wife was eleven months pregnant, and if he was waiting on the call to rush to the hospital.

“No”, he replied without looking up.  “We’re well beyond our child-rearing days”.

Apparently, my attempt to diffuse the situation with some sarcastic humor had failed.

Some people find themselves in jobs where they really are on call over a weekend.  For the vast majority, however, they voluntarily place themselves on constant standby regardless of their position.  They then have the nerve to whine about not getting any time to themselves.

Suck it up, Princess, you’re doing it to yourself.

My friend above is a public school teacher.  I have great respect for the work that teachers do, but I’ve got to think that one of the perks of the job has got to be the fact that outside of the occasional basketball game, you are largely left alone on the weekends.  Does a public school teacher really need to be monitoring email messages on a Saturday afternoon?

The honest answer is “No”.  People, like my friend, end up doing so for a variety of reasons.  First, it makes us feel important if we believe we are indispensible.  Second is the addictive nature of being continually connected – what if we are the last ones on the block to know that the Joneses are having ice-cream with their apple pie for desert tonight?  Third, it fits right in with what we’ve always been taught to do – not to hold your attention on anyone or anything for more than 30 seconds.

The myth of work-life balance is not that it doesn’t exist, but rather that most people do not allow it to exist.  It is true that organizations need to reduce explicit and tacit pressure for employees to be connected at all times, but employees have some accountability here too.

The reality is that people love to complain that they work long hours, and never get a break, when in fact a large portion of the dysfunctional behavior is entirely self-imposed.  If you want work-life balance, then turn off your phone, and be completely present with whomever or whatever you are dealing with at that moment.  Unless you’re on call for the next space shuttle launch, nobody is going to notice anyway.

Every one loves Top 10 lists.  Join Jed and Bob as they discuss the things that any employee can do to improve their work-life balance.  Also learn why they believe much of the discussion about this subject is flawed.

Watch the ‘Top 10 Work-Life Balance Tips’ Video (15 mins 49 sec):

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Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Top 10 Work-Life Balance Tips.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

I spent much of my early adult years working the graveyard shift in a grocery store to work my way through University.  I’m not really sure why any thinking employer would leave four or five twenty-year-olds unattended in the middle of the night with several hundred thousand dollars worth of inventory, but they did.  It’s a good thing we didn’t sell booze.

There was a camaraderie on the Night Crew that comes when a group of like-minded individuals works closely together.  All was fine until one of the guys figured out he was in charge.  I suspect the store manager worked night crew once himself, and knew it was a debacle, and figured out how to solve the problem:  make someone accountable.

This was fine, except that because he was accountable, he, in turn, wanted all of us to be accountable.  I didn’t want to be accountable, I wanted to be at home, in my bed, asleep.  This guy took us to task on the length of our breaks, and how many bananas we consumed in the middle of the night without ringing them through the register.

In short, he did exactly what he should have, as our boss.  The problem was, this guy was our buddy a short time ago, and all of sudden he was the boss.  What happened to all those drunken stoopers where we’d backstab the management bozos?  Now he was one of those management bozos.

In some cases, when two highly-professional people decide to make it work, a new boss and his/her former peers can make it work.  Most of the time, however, you have to choose between being a buddy or being a boss.

If you are doing your job well as a manager, you’re not there to make friends.  You’re there to do your job to the best of your ability, which occasionally may mean pissing off former peers.

The bottom line is if your friendships at work are really important to you, you may want to think long and hard about how badly you want that promotion to becoming the boss.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Managing Peers.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Managing Peers.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

Learn the five critical things that all managers of their former peers need to learn to be successful in their new leadership role.  Also figure out how to strike the balance between being an overbearing micromanager, and being a pushover when managing former peers.

Watch the ‘Managing Former Peers’ Video (13 mins 24 sec):

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What the hell is a mentor anyway?  I hear the word, and I always think of Captain Marvel’s alter ego, Billy Batson, and his nameless Mentor.  As best I can tell, Mentor’s job was to drive a Winnebago around the United States with no particular destination in mind, and to give clichéd advice to Billy, all while giving any casual observers the creepy feeling they might be witnesses some form of pedophilia in progress.

The Management Gurus will tell you that when mentoring works well, it is a relationship of high trust, where the Mentor knows and understands the technical, political and social ramifications of a particular organization, but does not have organizational power or control over a person.  Some organizations even assign two people to each other for a mentor-mentee arrangement.

I don’t think this type of relationship is really possible in most organizations, and here’s why:

• We fired most of the middle-managers that could have served in such a role several years ago.  Now, outside of the occasional peer, there is no one to act in this capacity.
• Mentoring relationships take time – years in some cases.  Most people don’t stay in one job, or at one location that long anymore.
• Workplaces are generally lower trust environments than they were a decade or two ago.  Employees don’t trust the employer to act in their individual best interests, and employers see their people as disloyal.

Many organizations start these well-intentioned, but misguided attempts at mentorship programs.  Mentoring relationships, by definition, must occur organically, so drawing up a schedule to pair one person with another is a waste of paper.  Not to mention the awkward situation this puts the participants in:

“I’d like to introduce you to your new mentor!  Now run along and share your deepest fears and aspirations with this person.”

So here’s my alternative:  a personal Board of Directors.  Don’t be put-off by how badly publically traded companies have bastardized this good idea.  It is their implementation that is suspect, not the idea.  There are a variety of aspects of your professional life (and maybe your personal life, too) that could benefit from the external feedback of a Board of Directors.

If you’ve found a great mentor, then that person, may provide adequate direction for all axes of your professional life.  If you don’t have a mentoring relationship in place, you may want to consider a different person for each of the following areas:

• Technical – how can you better execute the core skills of your job?
• Political – how do you negotiate the politics?
• Organizational/Social  — who are the true leaders of the organization, and who defers to whom?
• Networking – Who do you need to know?  Who knows them?
• Community involvement — What causes or initiatives should you be involved in.
• Self-promotion – How do you raise your profile, without coming across as a bootlicker?

There are undoubtedly other categories unique to your situation too.  Perhaps you have people who can serve in more than one role, or maybe you have someone for each different aspect.

Just make sure you use their real name, and don’t address them as “Political Director”, otherwise you may leave people with that creepy impression like Billy Batson and Mentor did.

I worked with a client, who confided in me that he was about to quit his job in a senior leadership role within the organization.  Mike was really smart, and hard working, but had a bit of a blind-spot when it came to political considerations within the workplace.  He always insisted that he didn’t play politics.  What he failed to realize is that you can’t choose whether to play workplace politics or not.  You play, or you get played.

Mike and I role-played his resignation conversation a bit, and it became clear to me very early that this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions.  Mike was determined to teach his boss, and the organization a lesson on his way out.  No one was safe – his boss, his peers, and his direct reports were all targets of his wrath.

In completely unrelated news, Mike was a smoker.  Putting the addictive nature of tobacco use aside, people smoke because the short-term consequences of smoking are immediate, certain and generally positive.  How else can you look cool, get a nicotine high and relax yourself?  It feels good.  The longer-term death and illness are problems for another day.

Mike’s choice in how he chose to leave the organization was parallel reasoning, and equally as stupid.  He had watched too many crap-TV shows that erroneously illustrate people quitting their jobs by sticking it to their boss and the organization, feeling a huge sense of relief and a temporary euphoria before moving on to bigger and better things.

The reality of a grand-mal resignation is more like the eventual cancer and emphysema that smokers get.  It feels good for a few minutes, but ultimately sabotages the quitter’s longer-term career prospects.

Before Mike chose to light his future with the glow of the bridges he’d burned behind him, he may have wanted to consider how and when he might run into some of these people again.

Mike didn’t know which one of the peers he burned on his way out might be a hiring manager at another organization five years from now.  He also had no way to know that the boss he called everything short of illegitimate would also be submitting his notice shortly because he was taking on a new role at the same firm Mike was moving to.

Oh, that’s going to be awkward.  But they never talk about that on the sitcoms.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about The Best Way to Quit Your Job.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about The Best Way to Quit Your Job.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

Learn how to quit your job without completely derailing your career.

Watch the ‘How To Quit Your Job Gracefully’ Video (14 mins 34 sec):

Download ‘The Best Way to Quit Your Job’ Cheat Sheet, Video, Audio, and Slides

Learn how to lead and manage the balding and grey.

Watch the ‘Baby Boomers in the Workforce’ Video (13 mins 46 sec):

Download the ‘Managing Baby Boomers in the Workforce’ Cheat Sheet, Video, Audio, and Slides

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Managing Baby Boomers in the Workforce.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Baby Boomers in the Workforce.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

You’re out on a limb when you ask for a raise.  It’s kind of like being a teenager again, and asking someone out on a date for the first time.  The stakes are high – if you’re successful, you’ll feel good, and look like a hero to your peers.  If you’re not successful, you’ll look and feel like an idiot.

The reactions to success and rejection are similar too.  If you get the raise (or the date), you become the cock of the walk.  If you get rejected, you try to keep it quiet, or if asked, you say you really didn’t want it anyway.

The outcome of a raise request is highly personal – people equate it with their personal value.  It’s a bad idea to attach your perception of personal value to someone else’s assessment of you.  It is a good idea, however to attach your professional value to the goals of the organization.

Several years ago I did quite a bit of work with a company that conducted employee satisfaction surveys.  In addition to many questions about their leadership and work environment, we asked employees about compensation.  We discovered that there is almost no way that compensation can be a driver of employee satisfaction.

People are either neutral or dissatisfied with their compensation level.  No one is ever actually satisfied with the money they make, presumably because more is always better.

People become dissatisfied with their compensation for a variety of reasons, but one of the most prevalent is because they find out someone else is making more than them.  This judgmental itch often extends beyond our immediate peers, causing anger because of how much the CEO makes, or others far removed from our own circle.

There seems to be a disproportionate amount of anger addressed at CEOs and politicians; while we have a collective blind spot for sports and movie stars.  The CEOs have successfully equated their action and leadership with value for the organization (or they bribed the Board of Directors), and politicians, for the most part are underpaid.

If we should be angry at anything, it should probably be at overpaid movie stars who have done little else than won the genetic lottery for meeting our narrowly defined societal version of what is good looking.  However, many movie stars have a good argument that if a movie is going to make $300 million dollars, then $20 million for a pretty face has certainly contributed to its success.

And that’s the lesson for the rest of us.  We should spent no time being angry or bitter about what other people are getting paid, and channeling our energy into clearly demonstrating the value that we add to our organizations.

Either that, or ask the boss’s daughter out on a date.

Learn how to ask for a raise … and get it.

Watch the ‘Asking Your Boss for a Raise’ Video (14 mins 25 sec):

Download the ‘Asking Your Boss For a Raise’ Cheat Sheet, Video, Audio, and Slides

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Asking Your Boss For A Raise.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Asking Your Boss for a Raise.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

When asked about manager stress, I am reminded of when I did my very first gig as a Management Consultant.  The company I worked for paired me up with one of the wise old owls, whose job it was to show me the ropes, and make sure I didn’t say anything too stupid so as to jeopardize the relationship with the client.

His first bit of advice to me was, “never care more than the client.”  It was incredibly cynical, and incredibly valuable.  I am careful where, and to whom I repeat this advice, but many of the leaders suffering from manager stress I’ve coached over the years should heed this adage.

You can never be the only one who cares about something.  In fact, a key survival skill as a leader in the modern organization is to selectively not give a crap about a whole bunch of stuff.

I am reminded of a public sector client I once had who lamented to me that if they only had more resources, they could get so much more done.  I think she was genuinely shocked when I broke the ugly truth to her that she would never, ever have all the resources she wanted.  It never happens in the private sector, or the public sector – nor should it.

One of the key functions of a manager is to allocate the scarce resources of time, money and talent appropriately.  What separates great managers from the average and poor is their ability to manage the conversion of these resources to maximize the output of their group.

A great way to make yourself absolutely crazy as a manager in any organization is to try to get everything done that the company wants, as well as everything you want to do.  You need to draw your own line in the sand, and figure out what you need to do to be successful, and forget about much of the other stuff.  A great way to accelerate your journey to stress-leave, and make everyone around you hate your guts is to try to be all things to all people.

Of course, doing the above means you will spend a lot of time saying “no” to people, and risk not having anyone like you.  It’s called the burden of leadership, and it’s what you signed-on for once you gave up your individual contributor’s role.

So, to recap:

1)   Selectively don’t give a crap.

2)   You’re never going to have enough resources

3)   Don’t do much of the stuff you think you should be doing

4)   Don’t even attempt to keep everyone happy

5)   Your career as an organizational leader will result in you being in a constant state of marginal “pissed-off’edness”

Wow… that’s quite a bit different than the stuff they taught us in Business School.  But then again, how many Biz School Profs have ever had any success in running an actual business?

Of the top 10 things that make managers crazy, the second five are all related to managing stress.

Watch the ‘Top 10 Manager Challenges (Part B)’ Video (23 mins 44 sec):

Download the ‘Top 10 Manager Challenges (Part B) Video (m4v)

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Top 10 Manager Challenges (Part 2 - Self Managment)

Take a look at the ‘Top 10 Manager Challenges Part B’ Cheat Sheet

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• Don’t fight it – have a process
• Provide change management skills to your people
• Don’t enable other people’s resistance
• Over-communicate during change

Babysitting

• Don’t solve your employees problems for them when you shouldn’t
• Allow people to make mistakes, and accept the consequences for those mistakes
• Ensure appropriate consequences for all good and poor performance
• Don’t get dragged into personality clashes
• Be professional and calm at all times

Overload and Burnout

• Be self-aware
• Take breaks to stay healthy
• Consider burning your blackberry/iPhone
• Do not try to be all things to all people
• Be very focused about what is most important
• Delegate where you can

Red Tape and Administration

• Consider what would happen if you ignored it
• See you can get someone else to do it
• If you can affect change, do so
• If you can’t affect change, get it off your desk as quickly as possible
• Place appropriate value on your time, and hire someone else if appropriate

Personal Fulfillment

• Understand your connection to the final product
• Realize that often managers don’t “do” anything
• Get a hobby
• Take pleasure in the small victories
• Understand what motivates you, and give in to those guilty inner desires.

Learn Even More About ‘Managing Stress’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

• Watch the full length ‘Managing Stress’ Video (15 minutes)
• Download the ‘Managing Stress’ Video (mp4)
• Download the ‘Managing Stress’ Audio (mp3)
• Download the ‘Managing Stress’ Slides (ppt)
• Print or save the ‘Managing Stress’ Cheat Sheet (pdf)
• Click through to Related Topics:
  • Time and Priority Management
  • Delegation
  • Help! I’m a Micro Manager
  • Procrastination: Later, Dude!
  • The von Manstein Matrix
  • Top 10 Manager Challenges: Part A (Managing Conflict)

Not a member yet? Join us now and get instant access! For more information about the advantages of becoming a Wily Manager member, visit Become a Member.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about Managing Stress.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you’ll know we like The Office, Seinfeld, Saturday Night Live, and 30 Rock.  With only a few other exceptions, broadcast television is an incredible waste of time, and like other recreational drugs, should be used only occasionally and sparingly.

Interestingly, life on the corporate food-chain is not unlike a poorly written sitcom.  Perhaps that is why so many of them are set in the workplace.  Both the workplace and the crappy sitcoms have protagonists, antagonists, and usually some version of the mentally unbalanced.  Bad writing and poor acting are part of both as well.  Perhaps the only significant difference is that on a sitcom, big problems can neatly be wrapped up in 22 minutes, so there’s time to sell soap and give you a preview to next week’s silliness.

I decided to do some research for this post, so I sat for an evening to watch some sitcoms to make sure I hadn’t misplaced my contempt, and to bring myself up to date on some of the blubber being offered up on TV.

Apparently prime-time comedy is getting worse.  It is also apparent that one doesn’t need an abundance of talent to write this stuff, so Wily Manager proudly presents:

Manager in the Middle

Manager in the Middle is an innovative new sitcom from the people who bring you the Wily Manager weekly podcasts.  The primary character (yet to be named, pending focus group results) is a smart, but cheeky manager constantly being offset by his sadistic immediate supervisor.

The supervisor, Cruela (played by Jane Lynch) loves to pit one manager off against another believing this “healthy” competition will better help her run her business.  Our protagonist is also matrix-managed by a kind, cautious human-resource manager who always knows the right thing to do, but is unwilling to make a decision, and is incredibly conflict-adverse.

Our hero (played by Frankie Muniz (he’s all grown up now)) has four peer managers who all report to Cruella.  Rounding out the cast is:

• Vlad: The hard-working, smart, reliable foreigner who is easily pushed around for fear of losing his work visa (played by Fez from That 70s Show)
• Dianne: The single mom who is just trying to make it through the day, but is in constant conflict with Cruela, as she struggles to make it to the daycare on time to pick up her two kids.  Cruela would like to fire her for not working insane hours, but unfortunately (for Cruela) the work she does is outstanding.
• Don: The smarmy, but oddly likeable young single guy who doesn’t know near as much as he thinks he does.  He also loves to take credit for other people’s work.
• Vera: The jaded, cynical, sharp-tongued middle aged woman who has over ten years until retirement, but can tell you how many days are left in her working career.

Join us in the first episode when Cruela asks her team to stay late to meet a useless last minute request that everyone knows will go nowhere… and hilarity ensues.

Think we could get Fox to air it after Glee?

You already know what SMART goals are – find out about HARD goals and how they can help you achieve more.

Listen to the ‘SMART Goals are Dumb’ podcast:

: Download Podcast (MP3)

SMART Goals Podcast Slides

Take a look at the ‘SMART Goals and HARD Goals’ Cheat Sheet

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• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

• It forces people to focus on specific things
• It is very clear when goals are achieved
• They are connected with the overall objectives of the organization

What are HARD Goals?

• Heartfelt – My goals will enrich the lives of somebody besides me
• Animated – I can vividly picture how great it will feel when I achieve my goals
• Required – My goals are absolutely necessary to help this organization
• Difficult – I will have to learn new skills and leave my comfort zone to achieve my goals

Why We Like HARD Goals

• It takes people beyond normal performance
• Encourages discretionary effort
• The only way to create a “game-changer”

Learn Even More About ‘SMART Goals and HARD Goals’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

• Listen to the ‘SMART Goals and HARD Goals’ Podcast
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• Print or save the ‘SMART Goals and HARD Goals’ Cheat Sheet (pdf)
• Click through to Related Topics:
  • Time and Priority Management
  • Tools to Lead Change
  • The von Manstein Matrix
  • ABC’s of Performance Management
  • Aligning Mission, Vision & Goals

Not a member yet? Join us now and get instant access! For more information about the advantages of becoming a Wily Manager member, visit Become a Member.

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about SMART Goals and HARD Goals.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

Become a Wily Manager member and get instant access to even more information about how to Ace Your Annual Performance Review.  And don’t forget to sign up for our FREE Management Cheat Sheet Collection

Why do things go wrong with Performance Appraisals?  Learn how to manage perceptions all year long, and what to do if discrepancies occur.

Listen to the ‘Ace Your Annual Performance Review’ Podcast:

: Download Podcast (MP3)

Ace Your Performance Review Podcast Slides

Take a look at the ‘Ace Your Annual Performance Review’ Cheat Sheet

In many organizations, Annual Performance Reviews are about as popular as Ike at the Tina Turner Fan Club meeting.  They are done sporadically, if at all, and they typically have very little impact on organizational performance.

The last big multi-national corporate organization I worked for as an employee had a fascinating “system” for the annual performance review.  I would suggest it’s very typical to what is seen in other companies, so in the interests of demystifying the whole process, here is a list of definitions and translations to sort out some of the vernacular that accompanies the annual performance review:

Annual: In the case of the annual performance review, “annual” means maybe once every 18 to 24 months, or maybe never at all.

Performance Review Meeting: This is where both manager and employee avoid eye contact and share some awkward small talk before the boss launches into his/her diatribe of the last year in review.  Similar to a bad sitcom in format.

Coaching: This is the organizational equivalent of Batman.  You might see it late at night after a signal (usually a corporate memo) has been flashed, but if you see it at all, it will be in a poor light, and you’ll never be sure if it happened or not.

Developmental Opportunities: These are the things you will get fired for, if you don’t fix them.  If there were no employment laws, they would revert to what they used to be called: threats.

Pay for Performance: Managers who get along well with people, take the amount of discretionary salary dollars they have, and divide by the number of direct reports they have.  Managers who don’t care how well they get along with people give it to the people they like the most.  In the rarest of cases, there is a good measurement system in place that everyone understands, and it truly is pay for performance.  It is about as common as spotting a unicorn at the fall carnival.

Performance Appraisal Documents: This is a template that bears little resemblance to your actual job, written by someone in HR who has never worked in the core business.

Performance Review Meeting Preparation: This describes the immediate 30 seconds prior to the meeting starting

The Sandwich Method of Feedback: This is where poorly trained managers slip some “constructive” feedback in between two compliments.  For example, “Nice shoes; you’ve got some significant improvement to make on your analytical skills, but I like your socks.  Also known as the “Sh*t Filled Twinkie” method.

Performance Management Philosophy: This is the same affliction that causes writers of annual reports to declare, “Employees are our most important asset” without the implied disclaimer, “unless they cost us money, or otherwise inconvenience us.”

Seek the Employees View: This is the final 30 seconds of the meeting where the employee is expected to thank the supervisor for the constructive feedback, and declare his/her intentions to act on it.  Only trouble-makers would disagree with the feedback.  Under no circumstances should an employee ever speak his mind here.

I hope this translation helps.  For ideas on how to cope with, and ultimately succeed at your Annual Performance Review, download this week’s podcast.

Larry was my boss back when I had a real job – the kind of job where you show up every day (in body, at least), work as part of a cog in a huge corporate wheel, and try to attach meaning to mundane tasks.

The world was black and white for Larry:  if he thought you were a hard worker, he could be charming and funny.  If he didn’t like the way you worked, your life at work quickly descended into a living hell.  In the core skills and talents of the business we were in, there was probably no one stronger than Larry.

Larry did many things right as a leader;  he was not burdened by the need to have people like him, he got lots done, he was an excellent teacher, and he consistently produced the desired results.

As you can imagine, he also did a number of things wrong.  His treatment of people he didn’t like would clearly fall under the definition of harassment if it happened today.  I still remember the day when he repeatedly shouted at one of his direct reports (in front of many others), “You’re stupid!  You’re a stupid, stupid man!”

No one knows how many potentially good people he chased out of the business because his first impression of them wasn’t good.  And his volatile demeanor often took a minor incident and exaggerated it into a major crisis that required more time and energy by all involved to finally get resolved.

The company did invest in Larry by sending him off to corporate charm school, where he learned to soften his feedback:

“Not to criticize, but you’re stupid”

When I went on to leadership roles, Larry was a role model for me – both for what he did well, and by serving as a warning beacon for things he didn’t get right.  Here are some lessons I learned from Larry, that still guide me today:

• If you want a lot of friends, or have a high need for the approval of others, you need to stay in an individual contributor’s role.
• You always need to treat people with respect.  It doesn’t mean, however, that you don’t hold them accountable.
• You need to be absolutely clear about your expectations, and then dole out both positive and negative consequences when things go right/wrong.  Leaders who think they can over-acknowledge good performance, and not deal with poor performance, are weak and will fail.
• What you do is far more powerful than what you say.
• Leadership is hard work

Larry retired many years ago, yet his impact on me (and a great many others) is still felt.  I’m sure if I asked Larry, he would have absolutely no idea how profound his influence was on me or anyone else.

So one final lesson from Larry: As a leader, you have a significant impact on people’s lives… perhaps for decades to come.

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• Your projects, programs, and career turn on the difference between “no” and “yes.”  Part emotional intelligence, part politics, and part psychology, selling ideas is not like tricking someone out of his money.   It’s about helping others to see things your way— engaging their minds and imaginations.  (Richard Shell, author of “The Art of WOO – Using Strategic persuasion to Sell Your Ideas”)
• On today’s knowledge based workforce – “In our world, the right to give orders has largely been replaced by the need to facilitate, lead, and exercise influence.” (Klatt, Murphy, Irvine)

Influence Pre-Work

1. Establish Credibility

• Authentic professional relationships
• Expertise
• Trust

2. Plan

• Know how you are perceived by others.
• Know your audience - what do they value?
• Inside an organization selling your idea is likely to be a series of interactions rather than one single “pitch”

The Pitch

1. Context

• Frame Your Idea
• State the opportunity

2. Clarify

• Explain the details
• Why should they act?  (in their frame of reference)
• Supplement numerical evidence with stories, metaphors, analogies that will speak to the heart as well as the head

3. Create

• Deal with concerns or objections
• Seek and share ideas

4. Commit

• Determine Who will do What by When

5. Close

• You’ve already closed the “selling of your idea” and have commitment.  This is more about ending the conversation appropriately, saying Thanks.  Don’t keep selling at this point …. Get out of the conversation and move on.

Learn Even More About ‘The Power of Persuasion’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

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• Click through to Related Topics:
  • Improve Your Public Speaking and Presentation Skills
  • How to Build a Communication Plan
  • Getting Ahead
  • How to Manage Up Without Brown Nosing
  • Effective Interpersonal Communication

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Why care about Leadership?

• Retention – Unwanted turnover = 1.5 – 2.5 annual salary
• Capturing Discretionary Effort  – What the value of 10% more productivity?  How about 100% more?
• Less stress

Realities of being the Boss

• You are under a microscope
• The blame you get, and the credit you get are both exaggerated
• Most people land in leadership roles because they were good technicians or practicioners of their work
• Leaders underestimate the impact they have on others

5 Things you can do right now to be a better Boss

1. Be a better listener

• Take the time
• Don’t multitask (especially PDAs)
• Seek to understand… not to plan your response
• Paraphrase without being a parrot

2. Be a Teacher

• It may take more time in the short-run
• Don’t micro-manage
• Tell people why
• Connect them to something bigger

3. Give and receive feedback in abundance

• Look for opportunities to offer feedback on a daily basis
• Ask your direct reports for feedback frequently – and act on it
• Offer both positive feedback, and corrective feedback

4. Be crystal-clear in your expectations

• Write important expectations down formally at least once per year
• Constantly reinforce expectations
• Use several different media to describe important expectations
• Practice what you preach at all times

5. Provide consequences for both good and poor performance

• People will do what gets reinforced
• You are currently getting the performance you are asking for
• Be absolutely consistent with consequences
• Apply consequences to reinforce both good and poor performance

Learn Even More About ‘Good Boss, Bad Boss: Be a Better Boss’

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  • Conducting Effective Meetings
  • How to Coach When You’re Not the Expert
  • The One on One Meeting
  • Dealing With Difficult Employees
  • Delegation
  • High Impact Development
  • ABC’s of Performance Management
  • The Situational Leadership Model
  • Giving Quality Feedback
  • Help! I’m a Micro Manager
  • Millennials in the Workplace: How to Lead and Motivate Generation Y
  • Retention of Employees

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5 things you can do right now to be a better boss.

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“Selling” is not a bad word – it is an essential business skill.  It’s easy to see how some people would think that influencing others is somehow underhanded or unethical:

“Yep… this one’s got really low miles.  Only driven to church on Sunday by a little old lady from Pasadena”

In reality, many great ideas die an agonizing death because they have not been properly sold.  There also seems to be an inverse correlation between our technical ability, and our willingness to sell.  In other words, probably the more technically skilled you are in your area, the less likely you are to want to sell your idea.  (With all due respect to the Engineers out there.)

Here’s an ugly truth:  marketing is everything.  Think of the examples in consumer goods:

• 8-tracks were far superior in quality to cassettes or records.
• BetaMax was most certainly better than VHS
• Apple’s Mac has long been superior to any PC.

So if these are any indication, great products and great ideas require great marketing if they are to be adopted.

So what do you do?

First – you have to value the idea of selling your ideas.  You need to tell a story about how your idea is going to enhance pleasure, or reduce pain.

Second – Put together a marketing plan.  Depending on what you’re doing, it might only be half a page long, but have some idea about what story you are going to tell, to whom, and via what media.

Third – Check out our podcast this week to hear more about Influencing Others

Finally – remember that we are all “in sales”.  If you live in a society of more than one person, you will be constantly trying to lobby people to your way of thinking about one thing or another.  The sooner we all get comfortable with this reality, the sooner the good ideas will at least seem to “sell themselves”.

Find out how different people react to different methods of persuasion, and then effectively target those you may be trying to influence.  Also learn the three killer mistakes many managers make when attempting to influence others.

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Find out all about the Wily Manager Leadership Boot Camp:

• Why bother?
• What it’s about
• Who should participate
• How it works
• What’s covered

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As a society, we’ve decided that many behaviours that were acceptable only a few decades ago, are now completely out of the question.  A careful viewing of any episode of Mad Men will confirm how much has changed in a relatively short time.  Gone are the days of getting completely plastered at lunch, and then driving back to the office to finish up your day.  Same goes for smoking, recreational drug use, gambling, gluttony, and virtually all other forms of excessive, self-destructive behaviour.

There is one glaring exception: workoholism.  I am often bombarded on Monday mornings with tales of alleged heroism about how someone successfully avoided their family all weekend, so they could work right through to finish some insignificant office project.  The same people will drone on about how they get to the office before 7.00am, and work past 6.00pm on a regular basis.

Here’s a newsflash: this is something to be embarrassed about, not something one brags about. Not many people entertain people at the water cooler boasting about their other self destructive vices:

“I spent the weekend gambling away my kids’ tuition money!”

“I ate 12 boxes of Krispy-Kreme’s in one sitting on Saturday.  Then I purged, and did it again.”

“I’m pretty sure my eating disorder is serious enough now to warrant medical attention”

All of these sound as ridiculous to me as, “I work 80 hours per week on a regular basis”.  Congratulations – you’re completely dysfunctional, and probably need to see a mental health professional – top speed.

Workoholism is the working professional’s last and only chance to be a martyr.  These martyrs think the tales of their self-perceived heroics will place them in higher standing amongst their peers and boss.  It doesn’t – the only thing your organization cares about is what you get done.  Think of how many times in your working life you’ve seen the obsessively hard worker be passed over by someone else, who works significantly less, but gets way more done.

There are only two situations that I could envision someone working an 80 hour week:

1)   The exceptional project, event or occurrence that will quickly pass to return to a more reasonable way of working, or

2)   You are a farmer – in which case you have my gratitude and respect.

The rest of you need to wake up and realize this self-destructive behaviour for what it is.  For thoughts on how to get out of workoholic trap, visit our site this week, where we talk about the 80/20 rule, and how to apply it.

What’s the best type of office design?  Enclosed offices?  Open space concept?  Cube farms?

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“If a bulletin came out from head office saying that all managers had to wear a dress, he’d be the first guy in line down at the ladies-wear store” — Rick

Rick was a facility manager I interacted with many years ago who was an excellent upward manager.  He also disdained boot-licking as is evidenced in the quote above.  Most managers understand the importance of leading and managing well the people that report to them.  Unlike Rick however, these same managers have a huge blind spot when it comes to managing their bosses.

Rick was a good manager.  He knew his business very well, and he was very even-handed in how he managed people.  In some cases, he knew the business better than his bosses, and didn’t hesitate to tell them so:

“I’m not sure who came up with this idea, but they’ve never actually worked in this industry before.  I guess I’ll have to read them their fortune, and let them know it will never fly”.

Rick had no problem saying “no” to his bosses.  In many cases his boss would thank him for pointing out some of the ridiculous things that somehow made their way out of head office.  So how did he do this, and not get himself fired?

First – he picked his battles well.  The bigger the organization, the more people there are far away from the perverbial coal-face to think up stupid ideas.  You can’t possibly fight all the stupidity, so you need to choose wisely.

Second – he knew what he was talking about.  He didn’t offer platitudes and opinions when he opposed his boss.  He brought data and evidence.  It’s hard to argue with someone who has done his homework

Third – he offered good feedback to his boss as much or more as he offered constructive criticism.  He nurtured a “no BS” relationship with his boss, and constantly improved his credibility.  When it came time to challenge his boss, his credibility account was built up enough that even when his boss disagreed, he would still listen.

Give it a try – or you could just be an unbelievable brown noser.  Apparently that can work too:

Why is it important to manage your boss?  What are 4 key strategies for managing up?

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If you want to get ahead, then you need to manage up.  But how do you do this without brown nosing?

Learn to manage up the right way:

This is important because….

• Your boss is probably your most important stakeholder
• Problems often arise from style differences that are easily managed
• It’s costly in time, effort and credibility if you get it wrong

Figure out what your boss cares about:

• Ask to see your boss’s goals and ask about his/her top priorities
• Link them to your own
• Set up a recurring meeting if one is not currently in place
• Assess your boss’s world-view

Create and manage two-way expectations:

• Know what is expected of you – preferably in writing
• Communicate what your expectations of your boss are
• Ask your boss about his/her style
• Never surprise your boss
• Make your boss look like a star

Ask for feedback:

• Actively seek out feedback from your boss and others
• Listen and act on feedback that you get
• Give feedback generously to your boss and others

Adjust your style:

• You can only control your own behaviour
• You are accountable for your relationship with your boss
• Communicate in a way that is most meaningful to your boss
  • Media
  • Level of detail
  • Frequency
• Look to complement how your boss operates

Learn Even More About ‘How to Manage Up Without Brown Nosing’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

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• Click through to Related Topics:
  • My Boss is a Micro Manager
  • Getting Ahead

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Do you have a job description?  Have you seen it since you were hired into your current position?  Does it bear any resemblance to what you actually do every day?  If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions (much less all 3 of them), you are in the minority.  Most organizations either don’t have job descriptions, or have ones that are useless.

There is a good argument to be made that job descriptions are a relic from a time gone by, and that many jobs defy a linear description that is normally seen on a job description.  I would argue that the majority of jobs can, and should have job descriptions, but not in the way they are normally done.

If your job description articulates in painstaking detail the activities that you will undertake on a “normal” day, then it officially sucks.  Sorry to be the one to bring it up but:

a)    Nobody cares how busy you are.

b)   Nobody cares what you do.

Of course there are some highly bureaucratic organizations (often governmental organizations) where they do care about these things, but they are the minority.

Well run organizations care what you get done.  What did you produce?  What are your results?  How much value did you create?  A good job description will articulate these things – not how many paper clips you will use to file a report.

So I’m drawing a line in the sand today – Job Descriptions are dead.  Throw them away.  In their place, we will create POSTION OUTCOMES DESCRIPTIONS (PODs).   This is not a directive to the HR people out there – they are usually the last to come on board with such changes.  This is to every person who wants to make a difference.   A well-written POD will facilitate you making a difference at your job.

Write yours today, and get your boss to sign-off on it.  Then, when the crap-tasks start sliding across your desk, you have some mechanism by which to question it.  In your old Job Description, the crap-task would have fallen under “other duties as assigned”.

Now do you see why you need to do this?  There are lots of tools on the Wily Manager website to help you with this.  Join the revolution – and let us know how you’re making out.

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There are 5 steps to getting ahead at work:

Step One: Figure out what you want

• Following your ego is usually a bad idea
• Don’t do it for the money

Step Two: Make a plan

• What are the intermediate steps?
• Don’t be linear
• Take control – no one else is in charge of your career
• Manage your reputation

Step Three: Reach out to people

• Network
• Ask for Feedback
• Volunteer for high-profile projects
• Get outside your silo
• Network outside your organization
• Keep your boss in the loop as much as possible

Step Four: Beware of others who may want to keep you where you are

• If you’re generating results, they’ll want to keep you there
• Talent hoarding is a real problem
• Never trust anyone in HR
• You need to be in charge of your career

Step Five: Help others

• Karma
• Delegate lots
• Be a teacher
• Build great teams around you

Learn Even More About ‘Getting Ahead’

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• Click through to Related Topics:
  • Time and Priority Management
  • Improve Your Public Speaking and Presentation Skills
  • The von Manstein Matrix
  • How to Manage Up Without Brown Nosing
  • Ace Your Annual Performance Review
  • Asking Your Boss for a Raise: How to Ask for a Raise … And Get It

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Learn the 5 steps to getting ahead at work.

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Every now and then Jed or I will be sitting across the table from someone who will confide in us that he really wants to be promoted into the next job.  Sometimes, he may not know what that next job is, but he really wants it.  “How do I get ahead?”, he may ask of us.  This got me to thinking:

Boot-licking – Constant, shameless, thorough and quality bootlicking.

Eliminate the competition by quietly and carefully sabotaging their every move.  If you think they might be higher in the standings than you for the next role — take them out.

Sewering Your Boss –  Maybe if you make her look stupid enough, they’ll fire her, and put you in her role.

Constantly Champion Your Own Virtues – If people don’t know how wonderful you are, it’s about time you told them.  Don’t be afraid to repeat, ad nauseam.

Sorry – I seem to have lost my inner-monologue.

It’s frightening how many people think that one or more of the above will work.  We see it time and time again, even if people don’t fully admit to employing some or all of these techniques.

There is no doubt that occasionally a boot-licker will slip between the cracks and have some success for a limited period of time.  Maybe even a year or two.  However, there is always a reckoning.  This is not to say that the most qualified person always gets the job – organizational politics are a fact of life that people need to accept.  I don’t know of any organizations that are pure meritocracies.

But people who attempt to prosper by insincere means most often meet their demise with the same level of intensity as they played the game.  What comes around goes around – even though it may take longer than many of us might like.

So how do you get ahead in your career?  Start by not being an idiot.  If you can’t manage that, you’re not going to get ahead anyway, so you might as well cut your losses now.  (Oops – there’s my inner-monologue again).

If you want some other ideas, download our latest podcast on How to Get Ahead – Wily Manager Style.

In the meantime… let’s be careful out there.

OK – we’ve all done it.  Decided to do something ourselves because its easier and faster than holding the appropriate person to account.  Maybe you’ve even done it with your children.  Micro-managing – the gift that keeps on destroying.

Every manager has been warned against this, so let’s look at why it happens, given the most common excuses most managers give for doing so:

It’s faster to do it myself.  It probably is faster… the first time.  But if you look at the amount of time it will take you to teach or correct someone else in the execution of a task, versus the amount of time it will take you to do it on an ongoing basis, the answer is clear.

I can do it better. You probably can… for a while.  However, if you insist on doing every individual task yourself, you will become quickly overwhelmed, and will end up doing some (high) proportion of those tasks poorly.

My people aren’t capable. If this is the case for any amount of time, you are clearly not doing your job as a manager.  It is your job to develop people.  Occasionally you truly don’t have the right talent, in which case you have to make changes to your talent bench.

I need to keep close to the details. Actually, you probably don’t.  As a manager, it is not your job to be expert at everything.  It’s your job to create experts, and be able to ask some semi-intelligent questions of them.

If I don’t do all these tasks, I won’t be useful anymore. Listen to yourself.  If you’re that insecure in your role as a leader, you need to examine whether you should be in a management role at all.

The bottom line is that micro-managers sap the productivity out of organizations by failing to capture the discretionary effort of their employees.  They don’t develop people, which is a primary function of a leader.  They also limit their own career mobility by trying to make themselves indispensible in the role they are in.

Micro-management is a self-destructive behaviour, and a great way to get fired.  Then you’ll have lot’s of time.

I’m not really sure when it happened.  Sometime over the last few years it has become socially acceptable to have a potty-mouth at the office.  Most often I am invited into workplaces for short periods of time – usually a few months – so I normally don’t know anyone when I first show up, and have to take some time to get to know people.

I find it incredible that people who don’t know me are quite willing to use exceptionally foul language in our very first meeting.  I should clarify two things:

1)   I’m not there to fire them, or otherwise torture them… which may be construed as just-cause for an expletive or two.

2)   I’m not offended by any of this, and use my own fair-share of foul words in more familiar company.

I just find it curious that people think words your mother always told you she didn’t want to hear are now common-place in work settings.  In my experience, this transcends just about all demographic groups.  It is not just younger people, nor is it just men.  I have witnessed this in large cities, and small ones, in a wide variety of industries.  I think it’s safe to say this has become a societal thing.

So… what is to be done?  Probably nothing.  But I would caution anyone who cares that first impressions are very powerful, and if you litter your first impression with language that would make a lumberjack blush, then you will inevitably come across as insensitive and less intelligent.

As a general rule of thumb, it might be good to know someone’s last name, before asking them (in so many words) if they like sex and travel.  Likewise, don’t assume that you’re not offending anyone, just because everyone else seems to be swearing.  It’s amazing that many offices insist on no fragrances or smelly foods for fear of upsetting someone, but have no similar guidelines for certain forms of noise pollution.

Until you know who you’re talking to, you might want to channel Bill Cosby more so than Eddie Murphy.  In the mean time… check out this clip for how one office handled it.

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Symptoms of Micro-Managers:

• Highly Controlling – wants to oversee every aspect of the work
• Power-Hungry – enjoys “flexing muscles” to ensure everyone knows s/he is the boss
• Makes all the decisions – no matter how minor

Why are They Like This?

• Insecurity – may be unsure of their own ability in the job
• Power-crazed – may use their position to feel self-important
• Perfectionist – may need every aspect of the job to be as close to perfect as possible
• Not a Leader – may have been a great individual contributor, but has moved to a leadership role without requisite training

What Can I Do About It?

1. Upward Manage

• Schedule and structure one on one meeting times with your boss
• Determine what is most important to him/her, and contribute to those priorities
• Talk about what you plan to do in the coming week, and get feedback in advance
• Don’t ever surprise your boss

2. Get a Performance Agreement

• Define boundaries of authority.
• Agree on a work plan that defines outcomes and methods
• Agree on the top 3 – 7 priorities
• Link your performance goals clearly to your bosses goals

3. Learn to Say “No”

• Always say “Yes” before saying “No”
• Acknowledge their position as the boss
• Refer to your Performance Agreement
• If you think a request is unreasonable, try to negotiate.  Educate him/her as to the nature of the request
• Describe the impact a request may have on you without complaining
• Carefully manage your tone

Learn Even More About ‘My Boss is a Micro Manager’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

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  • Help! I’m a Micro Manager
  • How to Manage Up Without Brown Nosing
  • Top 10 Manager Challenges: Part A (Managing Conflict)

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What do you do if you work for a micromanager?

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In professional sports, considerable resources are spent scouting new prospects and eventually landing them in the organization.  Those that manage professional sports know that you truly do “win it in the draft”, and they take their recruiting process seriously enough to make it a key source of competitive advantage.

With very few exceptions, other businesses do not do nearly as well.  Many (perhaps most) organizations manage the recruiting process about as well as George Bush manages the English language.  It might be entertaining, but only for the same reason you would slow down to look at an accident scene on the side of the highway.

It seems that many organizations of all shapes and sizes improvise their way through this important process.  What makes this most surprising is that every time an organization goes to the market to hire, they put themselves at considerable risk: risk to reputation, as well as legal risk if they mismanage the recruiting process badly enough.

A meaningful discussion of this important subject would take much more space than I have here, but here are five ideas to improve the recruiting process in any organization:

1. Take it seriously — it’s very expensive to get it wrong.  The Journal of Compensation and Benefits estimates the cost of turnover at 1.5 to 2.5 the annual salary of the position.  So when your new recruit doesn’t work out, and leaves after three months, there is a real cost to the organization.
2. Know what you’re recruiting for.  If there isn’t a comprehensive job description, you need to write one – before you even place an ad.  You need to know what results the position should be achieving, and what competencies are required to do the job well.
3. Separate your needs from your wants. I recently read a job advertisement in the paper for a public sector organization that wanted 20 years of experience, and multiple university degrees for a job they were only willing to pay $45k per year.  That person does not exist.  Decide what your “minimum price of entry” requirements are, and categorize everything else as a “want”.  In other words, it would be a bonus if the person had that experience or competency.
4. Get rid of bad recruiters or hiring managers. Anyone who seems to power trip or get perverse pleasure out of making candidates squirm should be removed from the process.  If you find yourself with such a recruiter or an HR person – fire her.  If it is a hiring manager, insulate them from the process, and seriously consider firing him/her, too.
5. Make the match. Remember you are being evaluated every bit as much as you are evaluating the client.  Allow the candidate to ask questions; Tell people what to expect; follow up with everyone; always check references.

As best I can tell, most organizations recruit poorly not because they don’t know what to do, but rather because they choose not to do it.  This is at your peril.

By the way – Jed and I have done a podcast and a topic bundle on effective interviewing.  Hopefully you find it useful.

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What’s Wrong With Being a Micro-Manager?

• You are creating unnecessary work for yourself and others, and therefore wasting resources
• You could be negatively affecting turnover
• You are destroying discretionary effort and thereby reducing productivity
• You will burn yourself and others out

How People Become Micro-Managers

• They were great individual contributors, but never transitioned to being a leader
• They have perfectionist tendencies
• They are insecure in their role as a leader
• They are control-freaks

How do I Address This?

1. Clearly Define Expectations

• Put written performance agreements in place
• Define the boundaries of people’s jobs and determine what level of authority they can have

2. Experiment With Giving People More Authority

• Define outcomes; allow people to determine methods
• Start small if necessary
• Ask for progress reports

3. Leadership Development

• Find ways to improve your ability as a leader.
• Dedicate time to focus on leadership issues as opposed to the detail or the work

Learn Even More About ‘Help! I’m a Micro-Manager’

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  • Time and Priority Management
  • Delegation
  • My Boss is a Micro Manager
  • Getting Ahead
  • Good Boss, Bad Boss, Be a Better Boss

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Think you might be a micro-manager?  Listen to this podcast and find out:

• Why you should care
• How people get to be micro-managers
• What you can do to address your problem

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I found this clip on YouTube that is a hilarious/sad commentary on many workplaces.  Happy Viewing.

Other than questioning someone’s parentage, is there a faster way to insult someone than calling him an introvert?  Isn’t introversion something that we need to cure people of by sending them to the Dale Carnegie Course?

Many organizations have invested in some form of psychometric instrument that indicates whether people have a preference for introverted or extroverted behaviour, but that hasn’t stopped the vast majority of people from throwing around these terms without actually having a clue as to what they mean.

People hear “extrovert”, and they think: outgoing, friendly, social, capable, productive, normal.

People hear “introvert”, and they think: shy, withdrawn, anti-social, illusive, dysfunctional, wall-flower.

The problem with these descriptions is that neither is particularly accurate, and it infers that people are capable of only one set of behaviours exclusively.  There is also a connotation that Extroverts will excel in business to a much higher degree than Introverts.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins reveals the qualities that his research has shown as effective in running great organizations.  Interestingly, many of the qualities of “Level Five Leadership”, are found more naturally in people with Introverted preferences.

You might also be surprised who may be a closet-introvert:  High-profile leaders, television personalities, sports stars, maybe even one of your friends, neighbours, or family are introverted.  They’re everywhere, so beware – you never know when they’ll want to slink into the back corner of a meeting room, and silently wish everyone would stop talking at once.  Or perhaps pray that someone will listen to them for 20 seconds before interrupting them.  Worse yet, they may think about something before responding to a question creating that awkward few seconds silence.

So you may be wondering where I fit on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Grid.

As someone who spends a lot of time talking to groups of people, and a person who worked in television (for a short and spectacularly unsuccessful period of time), I am rarely accused of being an Introvert.

I prefer to label myself as a Recovering-Extrovert.  We might need to create a new scale for measurement.

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The most significant development for managers and executives takes place ON THE JOB (i.e. not through training or coaching/mentoring).  However training is what is most commonly offered.

Why most training is useless:

• 86% of people who attend training do nothing to apply what they have learned
• Typically only 10% of non-customized course content is relevant to an organization

Don’t default to training activities for yourself or your directs when building development plans!  If you do use training, think about what you are going to do to ensure that what is taught is actually applied.

High impact development activities include:

• Special project/Task force: Discrete project assignment aimed at a specific outcome.
• Fix-it: Turn around, restructure and stabilize a failed operation, project, or organization, or customer relationships.
• Start-up: Building something from nothing or almost nothing.
• Small strategic assignment: Examples include doing a competitive analysis; writing a proposal for a new product, system, etc.; writing a speech for someone higher up; writing a policy statement or summarizing a new trend/technique and presenting it to others.
• Deepening functional skills: Changing from a generalist type assignment to a more specialized job/role that requires/builds very deep functional expertise.
• Stretch job beyond ‘hip pocket’ functional skills: Changing job/role/career to a functional discipline fundamentally different from previous work experiences; may include a cross-functional assignment.
• Significant change leadership: Leading the efforts to design and implement major change to the company’s key business processes and core capabilities.
• Mentoring: Receiving personal coaching, counsel and perspective from a valued/trusted and influential leader.  Being a mentor for someone else.
• Build a team: Assembling & aligning a team of unique talent and skill sets to achieve a stated vision and strategy.  Maybe a project team.
• Coaching assignments: Teach someone how to do something they are not expert in; design a training course.

Learn Even More About ‘High Impact Development’

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  • How to Coach When You’re Not the Expert
  • Good Boss, Bad Boss: Be a Better Boss
  • The Situational Leadership Model
  • Retention of Employees

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Learn 4 easy ways to improve your presentations…and why friends don’t let friends use Powerpoint.

Listen to the ‘Presentation Skills’ Podcast:

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There’s lots of media coverage this week of smart phones – iPhone for the continuing saga of the iPhone 4, and Blackberry for the UAE’s refusal to use them based on security concerns.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should come-clean now on the fact that I came late to the smart phone party.  I had a perfectly good cell phone, and no one was able to convince me that a smart phone would make my life any easier.  In fact – quite the opposite:

“You need a smart phone so you can get your email anywhere, and always be connected.  The only thing I don’t like is that my phone reception is not very good.”

Sorry – that’s at least two strikes against the smart phone

1)   I don’t want to always be connected.  In fact I look to actively be disconnected

2)   Why would I buy a phone with the limiting function being the telephone itself?  It might make a mean frappuccino, but I would prefer it to make phone calls.

I finally relented and bought an iPhone because it effectively condensed four devices I regularly carried on business trips into one (phone, iPod, Palm Pilot & GPS).  The bonus feature was that as a middle-aged white guy, I instantly felt cooler with a gadget from Apple.

So once I had the new smart phone was I perpetually connected, as I feared?  No.

Not because the technology limited me in any way from staying connected, but because I often either ignored it or turned it off.  I am able to do so because I’m not part of a big corporate food-chain where I would be lead to believe that my very existence on the planet is contingent upon me being absolutely indispensible to my employer.

As a contractor of services, I am generally exempt from things like anxiety about job security (because I don’t have any).  But it got me thinking about why people feel they need to be connected all the time.  It is nothing more than illusions of grandeur if you think that no one else can do what you do.  If you are one of the few that has made yourself indispensible then your business is not sustainable, and we should probably fire you anyway.

Either way, if you’re one of those managers that is constantly connected to your workplace, you should work to wean yourself off this addiction.  Work, like all other recreational drugs, should be used only in moderation.

Some kids grow up wanting to be a fire-fighter, a police officer, teacher or doctor.  I wanted to be Mr. Rogers.  No eight-year-old will tell you she wants to be a manager when she grows up (and if she does, get her into therapy top speed).  Yet there are more managers than there are fire-fighters, police officers, teachers and doctors combined by a factor of ten or more.

So how does this happen?

If management were a profession like others, someone would go to school to study the vocation of management, apprentice for some period of time, and then be deemed fully capable of executing as a manager.  MBA schools have failed to do this effectively, and the vast majority of companies develop their managers in a haphazard fashion.

Most people end up as managers by going into to some line of work for which they show some aptitude, and then are promoted to oversee others doing similar work.  Somewhere along the line, they might take a course or two, and some companies may even send their high potential new managers to business school.

Most organizations make the critical mistake of assuming that because someone is a proficient practitioner of a certain trade that she will be a good manager.  Organizations need to change their focus away from the technical aspects of a particular function (or group of functions), and instead focus on what skills a manager will need to be successful in that environment.

If more than half that list of competencies is focused on technical aspects of the industry or job, then it has been done wrong.

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m not a big fan of pulling people with no industry experience, and placing them in key management positions.  I don’t think this approach has worked very often.  If organizations are serious about having great management, then they need to select people for management positions with the core competencies required to manage in that environment, and then continually develop them.

Either that, or select tall guys with brown hair, who wear blue shirts.  That works too.

One of my favourite work assignments was a project based in Philadelphia that was a joint venture between an American Company and a British one.  One would think the similarities between these two countries would keep cross-cultural issues to a minimum, but as anyone who has worked in both countries will tell you, the differences are more than merely adjusting to funny accents.

One of the first wrinkles that needed to ironed out was the fact that Americans take about 3 weeks vacation a year in increments of no longer than 5 days, and their British counterparts have two or three times that holiday entitlement.

While the Brits would jet off to Southern Europe for 3 weeks at a time during the summer, the Americans would be at the office working the same excessive hours as always.  Interestingly, the productivity of the two groups was about the same.

This got me to thinking about how we work in North America, and how much of the time we are pretending to work.  Lots of people will take offence to the notion that they are not really working, but in reality the bulk of the work at many organizations takes place in just a few weeks per year.

January through May are good production months, except for a few days around Easter and Spring Break.  June through August, many people are not at work at all, and those that are working show up, but really have one eye to the outdoors and their next BBQ.  September and October are usually about budgeting and planning, and while some will argue they are critical to the business, it distracts from the actual running of the business, and often adds far less value than it costs in time and effort.  Finally November and December work gets done, but with the distractions of Christmas and (for the Americans) Thanksgiving.

So as a manager, how do you reconcile that the few people that do show up in July and August are probably just pretending to work?  You don’t.  It’s part of the deal, and most organizations don’t fall apart as a result.  The real question to ask is whether the work being done the rest of the year, when the entire staff complement is in place and working at capacity has any value.

Anyway, I better take a quick lap around the office floor (holding a piece of paper, and walking quickly) so as to maintain the appearance of work, before someone figures out I’m part of the masses pretending to work during the summer months.

Poor Tony Hayward – he just wants his life back.  OK – that’s officially the stupidest comment of the year, but he’s apologized now, so it should all be OK.  Like most important life-lessons (whether it be business or personal), the fundamentals were taught to us in Kindergarten, we’ve just chosen to forget, or not apply them.

I was watching Disney/Pixar’s A Bug’s Life with my son the other day, when Hopper (the chief antagonist, and all-around bad ass) reminded Princess Atta that the number one rule of leadership is that “Everything is Your Fault”.  Apparently Mr. Hayward hasn’t watched any children’s programming lately, or he might have gotten some of this right.

If it’s any consolation, BP is not the only company to have reacted to a bad situation by making it exponentially worse.  Just a few months ago, we were watching Toyota come unglued like an Egyptian mummy in a swimming pool.  It seems that every organization to have screwed up (or just had plain bad luck) seems to go into ass-covering mode with the exception of Tylenol in the 1980s, and Maple Leaf foods just two years ago.

The big difference:  both the Tylenol and Maple Leaf disasters killed people, but instead of hiding behind their lawyers, the leaders of these companies made themselves front and centre, and took responsibility for the (in)actions of their organizations.

So what can the middle manager or front level supervisor learn from all the silliness?

First… go rent A Bug’s Life, and listen to Kevin Spacey’s line about leadership responsibility over and over again.  When you think you’ve learned it, go listen to it a bunch more times so that when the excrement hits the rotating air-circulation device, you won’t try to cover your ass, but rather step up and take your lumps.

Second… manage your little empire proactively.  In areas that could get you into big trouble (health & safety, violence in the workplace, harassment, discrimination, etc.) don’t ever settle for less than outstanding performance.  Executives at BP will not only oversee the loss of billions of dollars/pounds of shareholder value, but they may be held personally liable for sloppy process.  It’s not out of the question that one or more of them end up in jail/gaol.

Third… understand that taking responsibility is the burden of leadership.  This is what we pay you to do.  It’s what you signed up for in the first place.  If you’re unable to get your head around this, you should get yourself reassigned as an individual contributor.  Yep… that right:  If you “want your life back”, you should think about that before disaster strikes.

There hasn’t been a fall from grace like this since the OJ trial.  Ok… maybe this recent Tiger Woods thing, or the fact that people set the expectations for Barack Obama way too high could be close seconds, but the fact that Toyota isn’t absolutely perfect seems to be disturbing a lot of people.

Toyota is a well run company – despite their recent setbacks.  What separates well run organizations from those not so well run is the ability to respond to challenges, not the absence of any troubles.

I have no doubt the marketing people at Toyota are freaking out, but they do have some credibility they can spend on this issue.  What they shouldn’t do, is announce to the world there isn’t really a problem, and carry on with business as usual.  This is the corporate equivalent of OJ going out on his own to look for the “real” killer.

Toyota needs to step-up, acknowledge what went wrong, tell everyone how they intend to fix it, and then get back to completely dominating the global automobile industry.  Too much spin, and they’ll lose even more credibility.

And while we’re talking about supposedly world class companies, can we have a reality check?  I have studied and held up organizations like Southwest Airlines, General Electric, and Disney myself as examples for managers to look to.  In many cases I would stand by this advice.  However, we need to realize that even the best run entities are not going to do everything right all the time.  In fact, it is probably closer to the truth that these companies really only do things right marginally more than every other organization out there.

Don’t get me wrong… much like I find President Obama to be an impressive guy, watching people’s unrealistic expectations of him be constantly deflated, people need to look to the Toyotas of the world in the proper context.  They are not perfect, and they will make mistakes.  They also can’t be all things to all people.

I bought Southwest Airlines stock about 8 years ago, because they were such an impressive company.  So impressive, that I would lose my shirt if I sold those same stocks today.  I also bought Southwest stock before ever flying with them.  I have no doubt they serve their niche well – I’m just clearly not one of their target customers: “What do you mean you won’t assign me a seat?”

Leaders in big organizations and small should watch Toyota very carefully in the coming weeks and months.  They will either come through this stronger than ever, or crash and burn horribly.  Either way it will be instructive.

How do you think this will end?  Will Toyota recover like Tylenol did after the poisonings, or will Mr. Toyota end up driving down an LA freeway with a gun to his head?

What are high impact development activities? Find out the most effective ways to develop employees…or yourself.

Listen to the ‘High Impact Development’ podcast:

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The ability to deliver great presentations is a core business skill that very few people ever try to improve.  By following a few simple guidelines, most people can significantly boost their presentation performance.  There are four key things you can do to improve your presentations:

Prepare

• Know your subject matter.  If this element is missing, you are destined for failure
• Organize your thoughts in advance.  For some, this will mean writing a presentation or speech out long hand; for others it will be in point form
• Try to keep the tone conversational
• Recognize the difference between written and spoken language.  The use of run-on sentences and contractions is not permitted in written language.  It is commonplace in spoken language, so beware of writing a ‘script’ in proper written English.
• Use visual language and images – a picture paints a thousand words
• Contain your presentation to a few key concepts

Target your audience

• Who will be in your audience, and what is their level of understanding of your subject?
• How many people will be there?
• Which media will be most effective.  Is it Powerpoint?  Is it audio-visual?  Is it just you talking?
• What is an appropriate presentation length for the audience?  Just because you’ve been allocated an hour, doesn’t mean you have to use it!
• What questions will the audience likely have? Anticipate and be prepared

Practise

• Visualize: repeatedly imagine yourself giving an outstanding presentation.
• Practice in front of a mirror.  This is extremely uncomfortable for some people but if you can move past the discomfort, it can be very helpful. Rehearse language and actions
• Some people attempt to memorize their presentation or speech.  This usually doesn’t work, and makes the tone less conversational.  However, you may want to memorize a few key concepts to which you will speak

Manage the room

• Try to visit the room a day or two before your presentation so you know what to expect and can incorporate it into your visualization process
• Ensure the all equipment and audio-visual aids are functioning in advance.  Nothing ruins a presentation faster than asking 200 people to wait for a powerpoint presentation to load!
• How to manage your nervousness:
  • Remember to breathe
  • Follow all of the steps above to minimize the unknowns
  • Remember that your audience wants you to succeed

Learn Even More About ‘Improve Your Public Speaking and Presentation Skills’

Wily Manager members, click here to access the members-only area for this topic (you must be logged in).  In the members-only area, you can:

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  • Getting Ahead
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