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Recent Articles |
Beware The Busy Manager
Only about 10 percent of managers work purposefully to complete important tasks, according to a 10-year study of managerial behavior across a variety of industries.
Developing Effective Managers
Effective managers are people who possess great skills. In todays work environment managing a team requires more than just telling others what to do and how to do it.
LOHAS Leadership Summit
Incredible session. The two key thoughts.
Business Management: Honesty as a Policy
Business people often have a blind spot when examining their own companies.
Getting
Your Staff to Bend Over Backwards for You
The constant struggle to get people to want to
work for you is an enigma most business owners
wrestle with.
When
Does PR Help Managers Manage?
The quick answer is, PR helps managers manage
when it (1) moves business, non-profit, government
agency and association managers away from a preoccupation...
Coca-Cola
Blog for Worldwide Employee Survey
The Coca-Cola Company is using a blog as a communication
channel through which the 55,000 employees of
the global company can provide their views on
Coca-Cola's vision, mission and values.
For
Whom The Blather Tolls
Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Firefox, embraced
the Hemingway mindset in describing how busy people
should approach writing. The pride of Auckland
University, New Zealand, has some words of advice
for...
Football
to Business: People are Everything
The great NFL football coach Bum Phillips allegedly
said of legendary Miami Dolphins Head Coach Don
Shula (pictured below) that, "He could take
his'n and beat your'n; or take your'n and beat
his'n."
Who's
#1?
In the March/April issue of Journal of Employee
Communication Management (a print publication;
subscribers have access to online articles), my
good friend Steve Crescenzo questions the notion
of companies prioritizing audiences.
So
Many Managers Doubt PR's Value
As business, non-profit, government agency or
association managers, what they'll tell you they
DO know is, "PR is pretty much all about
press releases, broadcast plugs, brochures and
special events."
PR:
Here's What Works
When it comes to public relations, what can work
best for you as a business, non-profit, government
agency or subsidiary manager, is doing something
meaningful about the behaviors of those key outside
audiences of yours that MOST affect the department,
group, division or subsidiary you manage.
Powering
Up Managerial PR
For many managers, talking about how to power
up managerial public relations means talking about
favored communications tactics such as press releases,
broadcast plugs, special events and brochures.
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06.05.06
Why You Should Be A Coach, Not Just A Manager
By Anna Johnson
As an outstanding manager, you won't just "manage" people; you'll also assist the members of your team develop to their true potential.
This means helping team members utilize their talents, develop new skills and knowledge, overcome fresh challenges, become more and more productive, become happier, and in all respects grow as employees and people.
To fulfill these responsibilities you'll need to develop coaching -- as well as -- managing skills.
The essence of being a coach is to help someone reach beyond his or her own perceived limitations and achieve his or her full potential. (I'll now interchange the male and female pronouns for the purpose of readability.)
Unlike other aspects of managing, when you coach someone, you are focused on her as a person, not on the task or tasks you want her to complete.
You have many "tools" to accomplish this. You can give advice and direction -- on the individual's career, on how to complete certain tasks, on how to work within the political framework of the organization, and so on. For the most part, however, coaching involves prompting the person -- asking questions -- to help the "coachee" discover her own answers.
You may coach via your regular, day-to-day, interactions with your staff as well as during your more formal meetings (including the performance appraisal).
Ideally, however, you will schedule some specific coaching sessions with each team member. These aren't for giving feedback or for appraising her performance; they're for coaching. During these meetings -- which may last for 30 to 60 minutes -- you'll ask some questions and let your employee do most of the talking. Your aim is to find out if she has any specific goals or challenges, and help her find a way to overcome them.
You might kick off a coaching session by explaining how coaching works. Then you might ask the employee what she would like to be coached about. She might have a problem working with someone else, or she might want to know how she can get promoted faster, or she might want to change roles. (If that's the case, relax. Remember, you want the best people working for you, not people who want to be somewhere else!).
Your next question may be to ask her what outcomes she wants. After she answers -- and remember to give her as much time as she needs to do so -- your next question might be about the difficulties or challenges she perceives in pursuing those outcomes.
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You might then ask, "How can you overcome those difficulties?" in order to prompt her to work out her own solutions. Of course, she might be looking for answers from you at this point... and although there is a place for giving her advice... ideally she will come up with her own ideas.
Finally, you might ask your employee to give you her "game plan" for overcoming the problem or achieving the goal, ensuring that she has covered off all possible roadblocks to her success.
You can also coach people on a more informal basis. In fact, all "feedback opportunities" are coaching opportunities.
For example, if someone hasn't performed a task very well, he will learn where he went wrong and how to work better next time if you coach him through the problem rather than simply tell him what he did badly.
Instead of saying "You should have done this..." "You should have done that..." you might ask him lots of "what" and "how" questions like, "what went wrong" and "how would you do this next time?"
There are also situations where you may wish to engage a professional coach -- from within or outside your company (as the case may be) -- to work with members of your team. For instance, if they want to make dramatic and difficult changes in their working lives... or you think they need an outside perspective... or you want them to have coaching on a more regular basis than what you can provide...
There are no special qualifications required to be a coach, so it's critical for you to select one carefully. In particular, look for someone who specializes in coaching executives and who has been through a rigorous and highly regarded training program.
Incorporate coaching into your role as a manager and you're almost certain to develop a closer relationship with your staff that leads to greater productivity, better results and higher morale.
About the Author:
Anna Johnson is the author of the How To Manage People System, including her book, How To Manage People (Even If You're A Control Freak!). Get Anna's FREE 12-page report, How To Be An Outstanding Manager - The 8 Vital Keys To Managing People Effectively: http://www.howtomanagepeople.com
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