Coach Train Learn

Positive – And Not The Way You Think

We’ve all heard about the ‘power of positive thinking’ as a technique that enables us to achieve more, just by the way we talk ourselves into it.

When you manage a team, you know that your people are your asset and how you are with them is vitally important.

In the way you speak; the way you behave in response to them and also – where you’re on the top of your game – the actions and activities you create to really make the difference.

They are the backbone of everything you are trying to achieve and depending on what they do, you will succeed or otherwise.

That said, it’s not a one way equation, because what you personally do makes a huge difference on the value you are able to draw from each and every one of your people, day-in, day-out.

Your behavior influences them in what they do; their commitment and motivation; and ultimately the value they bring to the team outputs.

To realize the potential that sits within your people, you will need to use all your significant skills to interact with them in ways that are both personally tailored, as well as focused on the business goals that drive you all.

In every day; in each project you are all involved in, there are many, many opportunities for what you do and the way you do it to make the difference between engagement and a full contribution and the run-of-the-mill performance that stifles so many teams.

And, at the bottom line, your attitude is a choice you make, each day you pull your socks on as you set out to be the manager and leader you want to be.

For some, it’s an easy step to make a positive decision on the way you see the world; for others, it’s more of a challenge – and one that can be learnt and practiced till it becomes just the way you are.

Prevarication Management Rarely Works

Jack was a new manager of a small team. It wasn’t his first management, but it was inside a larger corporate office, where this team sat.

They were a small intimate team and Jack felt it right that they should do the stuff that he need not do, so he left it to them to do the drudge work.

Not that he told them these were his expectations, he just left the work undone otherwise.

His new team struggled with this, as they had before been managed by a Sam, manager who consulted them well, who treated them fairly and, as far as possible within the organizational framework, had been democratic with them.

Everyone enjoyed working with Sam, so Jack had a big hill to climb already, before he started being all quiet and keeping himself to himself.

Indeed, he never even offered to make them a coffee when he was having one, though they did it for him.

Jack created an enemy out of his team. Although disliked because of the way he chose to do things, he was tolerated by most of them.

But Yvette really didn’t like him.

Yvette was, frankly, rude and awkward with Jack, so much so that everyone in the team noticed.

Jack sought sympathy from the others in the team. They really weren’t on his side, though they also felt Yvette was going too far.

This went on for 6 months. Jack become so frustrated that it depressed him. The rest of the team felt they were tippy-toeing round Jack and Yvette on eggshells.

Jack decided to leave.

Now, once he decided to leave, he also decided that he wasn’t going to take this nonsense from Yvette any more. In a one-off difficult conversation, he explained to Yvette that her behavior was unacceptable and that he wasn’t prepared to tolerate it any more.

Once Jack had this one-to-one to explain the facts of working life to Yvette, she understood. In fact this clearing of the air significantly improved their relationship, because Yvette now understood the relative positions they were in and the Jack had put his foot down.

For Jack, this action came too late. He had already resigned and decided to move on.

For an outside observer, it was patently clear that Jack needed to be firm with Yvette very early on and the issues would have been resolved easier.

But Jack didn’t like even the thought of confrontation. His choice was to absorb the dragging low-level stress that Yvette peddled for six long months.

It’s a tough call.

Grasping the nettle and having it out by firmly stating your position face-to-face early on, or suffering the frustrations and worry and ignominy of belittlement behind your back for six months.

Or is it.

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.

Finding The Real Value of TEAM

There is a bit of management-speak that I like. It’s the mnemonic TEAM‘.

‘TEAM‘ stands for ‘Together’, ‘Each’, ‘Achieves’, ‘More’.

The implication being that when you add the contributions of individuals together, the outcome is more than the sum of the parts.

This actually makes quite a bit of common sense and as with all things, it’s very true in some ways.

Let’s say you throw a team of people together and let them get on with, say, a project. Of course they will use each of their own individual skills to make at least something happen.

And that will be more than if each individual did their small bit.

In fact, with very little effort and just with the team working together, there would be an outcome better than those of single individuals working together.

The very act of working together catalyzes improved performance on its own.

As the team leader, you can get more from them than this.

Showing your best leadership skills, you can engage the team – the individuals in the team – to create more than expected, when you leverage their ability to discuss and synthesize improved ideas and then actions bigger than those valuable – yet always individual – contributions.

Being a team leader is all about facilitating more from the excellent individual contributions and creating synergy – the art of making 1+1=3 (at least).

By listening and asking searching questions of the team, you energize individual thinking to become much greater in their capacity to mould creative outcomes.

Much more than just leaving them alone to get on with it.

Just Helping Out

There is a time in any manager’s career, when the moment hits you, that your work has changed.

It’s in this brief moment, that you realize that you have stepped up from being a worker, to a manager.

In those few seconds of realization, you notice that something has shifted for you and you will never be the same again.

You realize that you cannot do it all any more.

You are moving from a person who is all knowing and all doing, to a manager who manages the people in the team to be all knowing (cumulatively) and all doing (collectively).

For many managers, they never have this ‘aha’ moment and they struggle on for their careers being inadequate, overworked and ultimately overstretched.

For others, they are able to recognize that they need to step back, do less and utilize the skills of management for which they were placed in position in the first place.

Then, there’s the twist to the tale – you still have to know stuff and do stuff too!

The key point is that now, it’s by choice where and when you get involved.

You can choose, selectively, where you show up for those jobs that are now delegated to others in your team.

And it’s so important that you do, from time to time, gets your hands dirty, just like in the old days.

It’s just that now, you decide when best to get involved in the work that others do. You choose to do it when you need to show solidarity; to help when they’re short-handed; to have fun; to team-build and more.

It’s the very fact that you know you can; you choose to or not to and that, ultimately, you’ve made the transition from chunks of the workload being yours – and yours alone – to them being someone else’s – and you will still help out when you feel it’s right to do so.

Now, you are a manager.

Any Questions…

It’s a simple premise.

We are all stimulated by the things we experience.

The world around us provides triggers for our senses. Our brains decode the inputs and then, often in the flash of a microsecond, decides what to do about it.

From the age old example of putting our finger on something hot and our brain telling us to move it away – quickly – to reading an interesting book and that changing the way we see the world.

These are all sensory inputs that we respond to in ways that we learn fast (the hot finger scenario) – to those occasions where we have the opportunity to choose our actions, like when we find out something interesting from a book.

We also learn from others too.

As managers, we are able to help our people learn and grow in many ways – we can teach them new things; give them new experiences in the workplace; coach and support them to develop themselves.

There’s an array of activities we can ‘do’ with those people in our care as our employees and team members.

There’s something simpler even than that too.

We can ask questions that trigger their thinking.

By being inquisitive (or just plain ‘nosy’, as we might say in England), we can use our own ‘not knowing’ to ask simple questions that help us – and more importantly – our people discover.

“Every question we ask someone, changes their lives in at least some small way”.

And it’s always for the good for them, because it helps them create their own futures.

Intrigued? Try playing with this!

Remember to expect nothing back – trust them to create their own thinking and actions that follow in their own time, in their own way.