Deadlines and quotas and paperwork and meetings – all of this and more constitutes the natural habitat of the typical manager. You have so much on your plate that it is easy to overlook your primary responsibility, which is to bring out the very best in each member of your team. It is easy to just pass on to them what has been passed on to you – more deadlines and quotas and paperwork and meetings, along with a one-size-fits-all job description that expects every unique person on your team to function more or less like interchangeable cogs in a well-oiled machine. The only problem is that people who are routinely treated like cogs in a machine can sometimes start to gum up the works!
Here is a news flash: the most effective managers treat their team members like people instead of like cogs or cookie-cutter, interchangeable employees. They try very hard to get to know their team members as people, rather than regarding them only as assets. Good managers seem to intuitively understand that they haven’t employed a shop full of fabrication specialists, they have employed a shop full of people who spend part of their lives at work every day overseeing fabrication processes.
With this in mind, an effective manager will often take the unusual step of finding out what an employee is good at, rather than always harping on and trying to correct some area where he is failing. In a free society, we all have equal rights, but that doesn’t mean we all have the same strengths and abilities. The biggest mistake a manager can make is to try to fit all of his team members into the same job description and expect them to all deliver the same results. It will take a little extra time, but the results will be far superior if you tailor the job description for each team member around those gifts, abilities and talents that come natural to her. That doesn’t mean your employees can’t all learn and grow in areas that are new or awkward for them, but in the long run, if you build up their strengths instead of always trying to compensate for their deficiencies, they will perform more consistently and productively.
Here are a few tips to help you move in this direction:
1. Invest a little time and money in having each employee take a behavioral style evaluation or a personality inventory such as Myers Briggs. Baker Communications includes a simple behavioral style evaluation instrument as a part of nearly all of our training classes. It is one of the most popular parts of our programs. Sometimes participants are skeptical, but then they get the results! Suddenly light bulbs are going on all over the room and people have new sense of how they can fit in and work with others. The same results will help you understand each employee, and help them understand themselves and their roles on the team better. Go over the results with each one privately, and make sure you both have the same understanding of the results of the test. Then don’t be afraid to let the results help you customize job descriptions and training opportunities for each team member.
2. Make the effort to get to know your team members personally. I’m not suggesting you have to take them all home for dinner. Just take time to regularly engage them in conversation on the job about things that don’t have anything to do with the job. Have a personal check-in session with them in your office once every month or so. Find out what they enjoy doing when they aren’t at work. Try to get a feel for the kinds of things that interest them or motivate them when they are away from the job. You may pick up some clues for how to better make use of their abilities when they are at work.
3. When all else fails, ASK. During performance reviews, or any time there is a window of opportunity for that matter, don’t hesitate to come out and ask a team member what they really enjoy about doing their job. Where do they feel must comfortable? Is there any area where they would like more training or is there another position where they would feel more qualified or more challenged? Within reasonable limits, let the employee participate in designing his own job description, based on the natural aptitudes, preferences and interests she has.
In a recent survey of several thousand workers, 60% said they felt they could achieve success faster when building on their strengths instead of trying to correct their weaknesses. It just makes sense that when your team members are in “the zone” of their particular skill set and personality strengths, they will be more relaxed, more motivated, more satisfied with their jobs, and more productive.
And the best part is that you come out looking like the world’s greatest manager, when all you did was put away the cookie cutter, get out of their way, and let them become the best version of themselves they could possibly be.
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October Management Quick Tip of the Month – The Other 80/20 Rule
Here is a version of the 80/20 rule that is guaranteed to make you a better manager 100% of the time. Whenever you are interacting with an employee, especially during personal interviews or performance reviews, spend eighty percent of the time listening and only twenty percent of the time talking, and most of that talking should be in the form of asking helpful questions to get them talking again. Most managers are accustomed to giving orders, correcting performance, and putting out fires. For that reason, they have a tendency to do most of the talking. Active listening, where the purpose is to learn something new about someone, is very foreign to most managers. However, it is only by listening that you can discover important information that will help you understand your employee more fully, respond to his needs more effectively and help him to be more successful. Remember, you can’t succeed in your management goals if you don’t find ways to help your team members succeed. It all starts by talking less and listening more.
