Coach Train Learn

The Purpose of Team

‘No man is an island’, or so said John Donne back in the early 17th century. Never more relevant than today. Never more relevant than in the field of business, a team is the vital component to deliver success.

Whilst there is a value in quality management – or we would not need managers at all – their capacity to produce results that are the required outcomes simply cannot be delivered alone, however good any individual is.

The true quality of managers is to leverage the numbers. To produce the synergies of their people where they engineer performance that is more, much more than simply a sum of the parts.

Blending together the varied components of a team is the artform that the best managers have been able to harness. Using the most effective man-management skills to generate collaborative performances by team members that go way beyond individual and isolated capacities.

That’s what managers do.

Groups of individuals, brought together to achieve a common purpose; bring different skills; varied experiences; wider potentials and more, that enable volumes of work to be delivered that individuals simply cannot. Groups do this.

Teams are more.

Teams are enlightened individuals who understand, appreciate and are engaged by the opportunity to work together for the shared outputs and have been able to step aside from personal interest and ego.

Great managers are able to motivate, engage and fulfill the potential that the individuals in their team offer.

And in doing so, they create results that are more than firstly they as one person – and secondly their people as individuals could possibly generate.

They leverage the synergy of the possibilities that teamwork is able to provide.

The purpose of ‘team’ is to be deliver more – be more – than is possible with isolated individuals, however gifted they may be. As inherently social animals, we cannot deliver outstanding results alone.

We need to be more than one. We need to bring together the many to be even more than they could individually contribute. In a place where 1+1 equals more than two.

Sometimes much more.

Change Management – Easy Tactics For Managers

Change has become a source of fear in many people, especially for those in the business sector. It is looked upon as something that signals the coming of difficult times.

If members of the workforce would just view the change without bias, it can be proven to be far from what its reputation stands for.

You see, change is not something to be afraid of, but instead it is something to look forward to, because of the opportunities and adventure it so often provides.

And since change will always happen – no matter what – it is much better to be skilled in taking control of these types of situations, whether you are leading change or a part of those on the receiving end.

For any organization, those with change management skills are vital to bring forth, because managing change is a relatively simple capability that many people may already have within themselves. If not, they can easily be developed through time and a little practice.

The first – and probably most important – change management skill, is being able to connect well with other people. Communication is the key to building trust within teams and the individuals in them, which in turn leads to them treating each other with respect and care.

This makes it easy for everyone involved to cooperate in discovering the best way forward during changing times and situations.

Next, those leading change must also have a clear cut idea of where things are going to go. This enables them to easily discuss and collaborate with others in planning on facing these adjustments as well as seeking their valuable inputs, which in turn develops commitment and inclusion.

Another important change management skill is consistency. With this, everything else done in relation to the change that is happening is executed with fairness and equality in mind. Helping those involved have a framework within which the change will take place and reduces the sense of simply not knowing what’s going on.

Along with consistency comes planning wisely. By doing so, you and your colleagues will be able to prepare for whatever will come your way. By considering (almost!) every possibility and planning every step – usually to agreed timescales – progress will be predictable and you’ll be ready for any surprises.

Last, but not the least in change management, leaders – and their teams too – must always have self-discipline and persistence. With the former, scheduled changes will surely be followed on the dot and through to achieve the outcomes required.

While with the latter, it can be certain that whatever has been decided will push through, no matter the hardships that come along with it. This will add value at the end of the day, which is the whole point of change.

Change and, for leaders, change management, really aren’t anything to be feared, because it is better to be skilled in taking control when change comes along. So instead of running away when you hear about change, get prepared to get going.

It’s the best way to make constructive progress where everyone involved is part of a win-win solution.

© Martin Haworth 2011. This is an expanded version of just one of many change management ideas, from Resilience in Change. For your free – downloadable today – ‘Managing Change’ Super-Simple Success Tips e-book, visit http://www.ResilienceInChange.com

Building Relationships – To Make Business Changes Easy

Relationship building is a vital element of any manager’s activity.

It has to be an incessant and pro-active behaviour which is – or becomes – the very essence of any manager’s personal style.

When we work with change, it’s going to be challenging for our people to accept, so the relationships we have with them will be strained by default.

We are doing something to them which is going to have an impact – it’s almost always our fault.

Where no real effort has been made to create substantial relationships with the individuals in a team, the more challenging it will be to make sure that change is delivered successfully.

The Challenge

Building relationships isn’t hard. Many managers find that creating the necessary time to build conversations with each and every one of their team is difficult.

When this is the case, it’s important to take a close look at how time is used and consider different ways to work.

Sometimes managers are not focused enough to make sure that they do their own role. It becomes easy to take on tasks which are less demanding at the expense of making time for their people.

Yet relationship building is the core of a manager’s activity set. The role is to manage people, not to push a pen around or work with objects. People are where the focus has to lie for any manager worth the title.

How To Do It

As a simple step to making relationships work, target having one-to-one dialogues with a set number of your people each day. Try to ensure that the way you interact with them is to value them.

An easy way to do this is to let them do most of the talking, by triggering their thinking with open questions that seek information. You can then easily let them talk and do most of the listening when that is your goal.

This can have a remarkable effect that shows them you care about them as individuals and that you have the time to make them feel a valued member of the team.

Investment upfront will then pay off when the tricky conversations take place in changing situations.

© Martin Haworth 2011. This is an expanded version of just one of many change management ideas, from Resilience in Change. For your free – downloadable today – ‘Managing Change’ Super-Simple Success Tips e-book, visit http://www.ResilienceInChange.com

Under New Management

My football club has a new manager. So I set to thinking about just what he might be doing on his first day.

Clearly, there will be a need to be introduced to all the key people on his team – and not just the players – so that he has at least got some sort of idea of who does what and where each of them lies within his remit of management.

Of course his behaviours will come under quite a bit of scrutiny too and how he comes over will – at least for the beginning of his reign – create an environment which is very important for the early days.

Now, managers have an obligation to deliver results – none more obviously than a football manager. Positive results will be great if they are instantaneously successful and they will also need to stand the longer test of time, during which overall team performance will be judged.

Like in a race, position in a league gives an obvious assessment of how they do and by definition, how their manager has delivered too.

In the cut throat world of football management, managers are only judged on results and, perhaps sadly, not really how they deliver them.

So there are managers out there in the industry whose attitudes and behaviours run the whole range. From out and out dictators, to the highly approachable ‘people-persons’. There’s no simple template that sorts out the winners from the has-beens.

On that first day, there is probably one asset that will be second-to-none for this new manager.

In his interests too, listening carefully to what each and every member of his extended team say will build relationships and trust in him – with the added benefit that the longer he listens, the better he will understand the individuals who will have to perform their duties – often on his behalf as they cross that white line onto the pitch each week.

Best wishes then to Eddie Howe at Burnley FC!

For an extended range of activities that the best managers focus on on their first day, here’s a link to an article I wrote a while ago http://supersuccessfulmanager.com/blog/10-things-better-managers-do-on-their-first-day/

Poor Management? This is Not a Solution!

Happy New Year!

OK, so after the hectic period of Christmas and New Year, I sort of forgot my usual Sunday evening activity of writing my newsletter. I knew it this morning and so I thought that I’d do it later on.

As it happens, this was fortuitous, because there was a phone-in on Radio 5 Live this morning as I was driving into my office that really resonated at first and, as the show and callers ran on, really began to annoy me.

It seems that the Cameron co-alliance, co-operative or co-alition thing – whatever we want to call it – has come up with a bright idea to stimulate business. They intend – or so it has been reported, that employees will not be able to take an employer to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal unless they have been employed for 2 years, rather than the current one year.

For once in my life as a manager, I found myself in complete agreement with the Union member of the panel. This was ably assisted by a rude, arrogant and 70′s command-and-control style business owner (Peter from South Wales) who, amongst other things, complained that women who are sick during pregnancy are a pain in the rear end.

I was amazed that he was allowed to get away with this – or perhaps there was little the presenter seemed to be able to do with such a rude, loud and equality-resistant man. It was a horrifying reminder of days gone by.

What I took from the program was that this change in the law is intended to nanny-state protect poor-quality managers who simply do not use existing processes, such as performance management or discipline rules to manage their people effectively, so would be given a right to get rid of under-performers – or indeed anyone they took a dislike to, with little or no redress for the employee. Back to pagan times then.

This is simply crazy. In 25 years managing, I was able to dismiss a few people who needed managing out of the businesses I was running because quite simply they were not good enough. Capable management practices enabled me to manage this adequately and legally within the framework of management.

I don’t think I needed some bizarre law change to do that.

No, this smacks of a soother to managers who simply have poor management skills. Managers who are unable to be effective; to hold difficult conversations; to be strong and fair; to be focused and rigorous with standards.

I once dismissed an individual whose performance was managed very precisely. It took myself and her line manager a full 12 months to work through the agreed performance assessment processes that were fair to the employee and to us. That was perfectly acceptable, if a bit of a challenge, but it worked and was fair.

As obnoxious caller Peter from South Wales, who found that someone pregnant who was ‘a little bit stressed’ and was signed off sick, well, it’s time to get real, my friend. Since when are you capable of making a medical decision about her condition? Time to manage effectively and what’s more, time to plan for the unexpected by developing more of your people, more of the time, so that you have a succession plan in place for eventualities just like this.

Mr Cameron, we need no changes in the framework for employees to be able to be got rid of more easily. What you do need to pay a bit attention to is the poor quality of managers we often find in this country and get that sorted out.

Not to create excuses for them.

10 Things for Managers To Do With a Spare Hour

There are those times when you’ve got your management act together when you reach those ‘One Minute Manager’ (Ken Blanchard) moments.

In the first book of the series (there are lots of great follow-ups), our star manager ensures that he’s able to spend a fair bit of time gazing out of the window because all the plates are spinning perfectly, with the minimal of intervention.

So, when you’re in that place with your management performance, what to do?

Here are ten ideas that you might want to consider when you are able to devote a spare hour to any activity you choose. The list is, of course, not exhaustive and you will have some favorites of your own.

That said, if you never have time to spare, taking a look at some of these will help you make that time, because the outcomes they will tend to produce will be constructive in magnifying the available time you have.

So, what’s not to like about these?

1. Pick an item to delegate – finding something that you permanently do NOT need to do yourself is a good first step. Second is to find someone who genuinely will benefit from doing that task. Thirdly, take the time to explain why you are delegating to them and the outcome you are looking for (don’t necessarily tell them how!).

2. Say ‘thank yous’ – just get out there and catch your people doing something right and thank them for it. This one is really simple and extremely productive.

3. Take an alternative view – ask yourself what would happen to a situation if you took exactly the opposite course of action than you have a current tendency towards. Just wonder about it a little.

4. Go and listen – get into easy conversations with your people and spend much more (90%) of the time in the conversation listening and work at just 10% of hearing your own voice.

5. Ask for help – go seek someone else’s help with a problem you are challenged with.

6. Ask for feedback – simple as it says – go off and ask someone on your team how you did with something recently. Listen to what they say, discipline yourself to NOT make excuses, if it isn’t positive. Just listen, absorb and thank then for their honesty. Feedback is a gift.

7. Be nosy – go poke around where your people work – not with personal stuff, but find out what they’re working on and ask questions that will help them tell you more about it (and then listen a lot – of course!).

8. Take a walk – yep, it’s time to ‘leave the building’. Spend a little time (you have an hour I’m giving you, right?) and go for a walk. No, there’s no catch!

9. Ask a customer – work out a way to interact with a customer or client informally. It might be a chat on the shopfloor. It might need a phone call to a random client. Whatever, just go for it and – you got it – listen!

10. Ring yourself – as a final challenge to your customer/client service, take a chance and ring into your own business, ask for yourself and test the experience. You will find it a revealing and, hopefully, a rewarding experience, even when you find out that your line is engaged!

How much fun is that? Instead of filling that hour with other ‘stuff’, you qualify all of these activities for that very productive ‘Quadrant 2′ as defined by Stephen Covey in ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’. Important and not Urgent.

All the more valuable and value-creating because of that.