Coach Train Learn

Patience or Impatience – What’s It To Be?

There’s a time for every manager to make a firm decision.

Good people management will always suggest that you encourage and support your employees to be of their best.

Yet there is the moment that you make the decision, that it’s time to make the point when performance slips.

When is your tipping point, where you lose patience and bring that individual into the office to straighten things out?

Whilst it’s good to give people the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong, it’s only useful up to a point.

By leaving things too long, they don’t get the honest, some might say demanding feedback that is the reality check they need, so the opportunity is missed

Of course if you see progress after mistakes, then that’s a good sign.

Showing patience with them, will build your relationship with them and give them the space to learn.

For how long though?

In baseball terms, there’s the ‘three strikes and you’re out ethic’, which is a useful measure here too.

It’s just enough and not too much for them to take the mickey, which serves no-one at all.

Being patient is a good step as long as what follows picks out the development needs they need to make – and show signs that they notice for themselves and respond.

After that, it’s time, so on the third occasion, be resolute, honest and respectful and take the time to have that one-to-one.

By making the time to let them know at this point and no later, you’ll save a lot of frustration on your part and prepare them for progress earlier than if you defer.

And that truly is a win-win on both sides.

Half-Time Working – Let’s Go!

We are all pretty busy in our work, right?

You almost wonder how it could be possible to fit more in.

Your days are so full, they often leak over into your own time. Early starts and missing the kids before bed becomes the norm. Missing your vacation time.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In fact, the truth is that we often do more than we need to, much more.

Think of it like this. Those days where you have to be away, like your vacations (you do take them now, don’t you?); being away for meetings; courses and other training.

Does the place fall down? Does the world crumble?

If you either answer ‘Yes’ to this, or you just can’t make the time for those activities away from your day job, you need to take action.

A simple way to understand this is to consider:

‘What would I only do, if I had only half the hours to do my job?’

What could (note, I say ‘could’), you stop doing that you personally don’t need to do? What could you do more of that would use your skills, whilst also relieving the pressure.

Be ruthlessly honest and change your mindset, because, if you are honest, your people could do much of what you do.

In Ken Blanchard’s ‘The One Minute Manager’, the manager there has it just right.

He does none of the activities that he need not do. He has capable people around him. He does much more of the work that enables his people to do what he now needs not to do.

Everyone’s a winner.

And you get home for dinner; take your vacations happy at being away; get developed for the next level of your career.

It’s about focus; letting go and doing the real job you have – and managing people effectively to do their jobs.

Over to you.

Interfere at Your Peril!

Generally, as managers, we know stuff.

We come into the role for the people management skills we have (or at least the perceived potential we have) as well as the experiences we’ve had in our past work.

Skills and experience mean that we can provide support and help to our team of people to get the job done well.

Sometimes, some managers struggle with this.

On the one hand, they find it tricky to let the team carry on with what they have been able to achieve up to now.

On the other, they interfere directly with what’s been going OK up to now and change things.

Now, when that’s to the real benefit of the customers and/or clients the team serves, it’s a good thing.

But it doesn’t always happen that way.

You see, some managers really struggle with letting be what’s OK and feeling it’s important for their role (here, read ‘credibility’), that they are seen to be doing stuff.

And, not only can that irritate the socks of the team, it can be detrimental to the final activities undertaken.

It can even be as simple as ‘intercepting’ mail that usually goes directly to the team – because you are the boss and, well, you should see everything.

In general, this merely clutters up your desk for you. More importantly, it can hold up what your people do, thereby affecting the way they are able to work best with their customers.

It’s always worth considering whether any intervention you make in the smooth running of your team adds value.

Better still, ask your people what they think and seriously, very seriously consider the impact on your end-user too.

A Football Legend

This week has seen the death of Sir Bobby Robson, a very successful football manager in the UK.

He was successful because he created teams that were capable of doing the job once they crossed that white line.

Managers can only do so much and then they have to leave it to the capabilities of those in the team.

In sports, there is no contest – they have to trust in their people, because they cannot cross that white line instead of their people.

In business, it seems to become blurred, with many managers being so much part of the team that the key players feel unable to get the job done.

Managing is not the same as playing the game.

The best managers prepare their people for the skills they bring and then deploy them such that they are left to get the job done – or, to follow the football analogy through, to win the game.

Sir Bobby Robson, as with all the great sports managers recognized that once that white line is crossed, all the preparation work done has to be enough.

In sports, managers cannot do it for them.

In business, we would do well to look to the successful sports managers for the example that delivers.