Collins Business Secrets – People Management

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Managing people is hard but rewarding

Build a strong foundation

1.1 Know what your own boss expects

1.2 Decide if you are a manager or a leader

1.3 Balance your decisions

1.4 Don’t be consistent!

1.5 Learn to delegate

1.6 Lead by example

1.7 Think about TOM

1.8 Create a ROWE

Create a great team

2.1 AIM to pick the right person for the job

2.2 Get the team performing quickly

2.3 Create a team identity

2.4 Create a team charter

2.5 Manage the people you don’t see

2.6 Manage part-timers and matrix workers

Set goals and targets

3.1 Make proper plans

3.2 Define meaningful goals

3.3 Understand SMART goals

3.4 SMART is specific

3.5 SMART is measurable

3.6 SMART is achievable

3.7 SMART is relevant

3.8 SMART is time-bound

3.9 Know the SHABBY and PRISM approaches

3.10 Make the mundane more exciting

Motivate yourself and your people

4.1 Know the hierarchy of needs

4.2 Motivate beyond money

4.3 Identify people’s personal motivators

4.4 Influence people to want what you want

4.5 ‘Catch’ people doing things right

4.6 Empower your people

4.7 Practise the art of delegating

4.8 Support your people

Manage good performance

5.1 Identify good performance

5.2 Reward good performance

5.3 Help people learn from good performance

5.4 Maintain good performance in a crisis

5.5 Beware the ‘Peter Principle’

Manage poor performance

6.1 Identify poor performance

6.2 Confront an instance of poor performance

6.3 Coach a poor performer to improve

6.4 Monitor a poor performer

6.5 ‘Manage out’ a very poor performer

6.6 Analyse your own performance

Develop your people

7.1 Commit to developing your people

7.2 Develop people on a tight budget

7.3 Help people leave their ‘comfort zones’

7.4 Set objectives that stretch people

7.5 Remember to develop yourself

7.6 Improve the working environment

7.7 Promote your people’s image

Jargon buster

Further reading

About the author

Author’s note

Copyright

About the Publisher

Managing people is hard but rewarding

As you go through life, you will increasingly find that you need to manage people. A parent has to manage their family; a supervisor or team leader has to manage a small team; an entrepreneur may have to manage staff, customers and suppliers.

Early in my career I took responsibility for managing people. I managed up to 250 highly trained professionals who worked as a tightknit team. It didn’t matter that I was the youngest person in the team! For over 20 years I’ve been working with individuals and organizations to help them improve their management of people. This has ranged from military personnel to entrepreneurs, from charities to government departments. I’ve learned many secrets and tricks over these years. Some I’ve discovered for myself, but many I’ve learned from others. Humans are wonderfully inventive!

This book aims to help you improve your skills at managing people – to help you find ways in which everybody benefits. It contains 50 secrets, grouped into seven themed chapters.

• Build on a strong foundation. You must understand what type of leader or manager you want to be. Your employer may give guidelines, but you must exert control over your day-to-day behaviour.

• Create a great team. This shows how to choose the right people and quickly build a functioning team.

• Set goals and targets. By setting people effective targets and goals, you can monitor progress and offer appropriate rewards.

• Motivate yourself and your people. Implementing ways to motivate people is ultimately much easier than having to cajole and constantly monitor unmotivated people.

• Manage good performance. You need to recognize good performance – reward it, develop it, perpetuate it and spread it to others. Otherwise you will lose your good performers and be left only with the poor ones.

• Manage poor performance. Some managers find ways of managing around poor performance without tackling the poor performance itself. However, this encourages more poor performance, from both the original perpetrator and everyone else. Know how to tackle the problems head on.

• Develop your people. Though often overlooked by managers, another fundamental task is developing people. You need to improve the less able, stretch and reward the able, plan succession for the future and mentor your people’s changing needs.

Managing people is a hugely complex area in which you never stop learning. The secrets contained in this book will help you make massive strides towards succeeding in this fascinating role.

Knowing how to manage people well is one of the most important skills in life.

Build a strong foundation

A strong foundation is essential for anything you build, and this should include your management career. You need to decide from the outset if people will want to follow you or if you will be relying on the authority vested in you by your employer. How you act as manager will set a tone to be copied, loved, hated, criticized, praised or ignored. Be prepared to take the time to promote stability and longevity for your life in management.

1.1 Know what your own boss expects

You need to understand in detail what your own boss expects of you as a manager. Armed with this information, you can draw up specific targets for both yourself and your individual team members, and be confident in your day-to-day decision-making.

1 Who is your boss? If you work in a company or hierarchical structure, then there is usually a clear answer to this question – your boss is the person who appointed you or to whom you report. If you are an entrepreneur running your own business, however, your ultimate ‘boss’ may be the customer, or possibly your major shareholder or even the bank manager who allows

case study A sales manager had been set sales targets for him and his team to achieve. He was also set a target for cost reduction within the department and was required to ensure all his staff were trained to use the new software systems the organization introduced. As part of the organization’s expansion plans,

you credit! If you work for a charity you need to be clear whether the ‘boss’ is the donor of the funds or the recipient of the benefit.

2 What does your boss want? If your boss is clear and concise about his or her wants, then you are able to move straight to setting targets for your people. If not, you are going to have to ask, and if necessary keep asking, until you get clear and SMART (see Secret 3.3) objectives.

3 When does your boss want it? Your boss will inevitably want you to achieve a number of different things, and you need to know the comparative priorities – what is most important/urgent and what is less so.

4 How does your boss want it done? This may include the detail of the method, but perhaps more importantly, the framework or environment in which it is to be done. For instance, are you constrained by quality procedures? Are there internal policies on health and safety, equality laws or human rights issues?

If you don’t know your boss’s expectations, then achieving them will be purely a matter of chance.

he was also tasked to investigate new markets and recruit new sales staff to exploit these. Unsure of priorities, he tried to achieve everything as soon as possible. After nine months he collapsed with exhaustion, having reached none of his targets or objectives in full. His team were branded as failures and dispersed.

1.2 Decide if you are a manager or a leader

Are you a manager or a leader? This is not about your job title. ‘Leaders’ have their ‘followers’, whereas ‘managers’ have ‘the managed’. This may seem like a purely semantic difference, but there are different concepts behind the words.

• Followers. These people actively choose to follow you. They want to support you, they want to work for you, and they want you to succeed, because your success proves they were right to follow you.

• The managed. These people are relatively passive in working for you. They are happy to let you make all their decisions for them. They do as they are told and leave it up to you to check the quality of their work. They don’t try to use their initiative because they believe that is what you are paid for. They give you the ‘right to manage’.

one minute wonder There is a quote from a staff members’ annual report that reads: “This person is capable of producing adequate results when under constant supervision and when caught like a rat in a trap!” Does this describe any of your own people?

It is probably pretty clear that your life will be more fulfilling and more enjoyable if you are a leader than a manager, but pressure (target-driven organizations, the desire to be indispensable, the feeling of responsibility) tends to encourage micro-management.

You probably need to ‘manage’ people who have little experience and expertise, but as people grow in ability and knowledge you can slowly switch from ‘manager’ to ‘leader’. Of course, if you take over a team that is already performing, you may be able to go straight to leadership and followership from day one.

A leader attracts followers, whereas a manager has to supervise the managed.

1.3 Balance your decisions

Are you the leader of the team, or the person tasked to get things done, or the person tasked with looking after the individual team members? Actually, if you want to manage people well, you need to take on all three of these roles.

There is a concept called ‘Pyrrhic Victory’, which describes a situation in which an objective has been achieved – but at too high a cost.

• If you make all decisions with the primary objective of achieving the task at any cost, then you might end up destroying the team on the way. But…

• If you make all your decisions with the primary aim of keeping the team intact and happy, then you probably won’t achieve the task But…

• If you are determined to ensure that each and every individual is safe, happy and looked after, then you won’t fulfil the task and the team will fall apart as well.

John Adair, the world’s first Professor of Leadership Studies, developed a model called Action Centred Leadership. His contention is that as a leader or manager you need to ensure that every decision and action you take balances the needs of the task, the team and the individuals. By doing this you stand the greatest chance of achieving the task, having a cohesive and capable team still in place for the next task, and having individuals who still have a good quality of life, and feel valued and respected.

This model is usually represented by three interlocking circles, from which it gets its name, Action Centred Leadership.

Answering yes or no to any of the questions above doesn’t tell you the right thing to do. By asking the questions before you act, you will get a chance to balance your decision.

Balanced decisions every day make for good leadership – not task focused one day, team focused the next!

1.4 Don’t be consistent!

“What?” I hear you cry! “Surely I should manage everyone in the same way to be fair?” Well, think about it: imagine you have two people, one is experienced, competent and willing, and the other is new to the task, has little ability and is lazy. Would it be fair to manage each of them in the same way? Would it motivate them both?

You have to manage or lead in a way that suits the situation. This is called Situational Leadership, a title originally coined by Ken Blanchard and Paul Hersey. Here is a simple primer to the idea:

• Consider an individual’s ability on a scale of low to high. This is their ability to do the job you are asking of them, not just a reflection of their age or years of service.

• Next consider their willingness to do this particular job, again on a scale of low to high.

• Now imagine these two values plotted on a graph, like the one opposite.

• The notations on the graph (C, D1, D2, S) refer to the paragraphs below the graph, which tell you how you might best manage this particular person.

• S = Support. This person is very willing but lacking in skill/ability. They need support in terms of demonstrations, training and practice (see Secret 4.8).

• C = Coaching. This person is both willing and able and therefore only needs some light coaching in order to perform well.

• D1 = Directing 1. This person has both low ability and low willingness. They are going to need much more in the way of directing – orders, supervision and checking.

• D2 = Directing 2. This person has already proved their ability but their willingness is low. They don’t need training and demonstration; they need some direction from you to understand why the task is important and how they will benefit personally by doing it well.

It is vital for your success and the success of your people that you manage in a way that suits the situation.

1.5 Learn to delegate

As a manager, team leader, supervisor or foreman, you have to delegate work to others. Delegating is a fundamental skill of management, but it is also one that many managers do very badly. There is a skill to learn in order to delegate effectively.

The more you delegate, the more time you will have to manage people and improve processes. In order to delegate effectively, you need to ensure that the person to whom you delegate a task is provided with four things: Skill, Time, Authority and Responsibility. The first letters of these words spell the word STAR, which makes them easy to remember, as shown below.

• S = Skill. You need to ensure that the person has the skill and ability to do the task. This doesn’t mean that they have to be as good at the task as you. (You may be able to give them more time to do it than you would otherwise have available to do it yourself.)

• T = Time. You need to make sure that the person has adequate time to complete the task at the pace that’s likely for their ability. This means allowing for the actual time this task will take alongside any other tasks they need to do. If you are their manager, they may be reluctant to admit that they don’t have the time. Try to ask open questions (“When will you do this?”) rather than leading questions (“You have enough time to do this, don’t you?”) to ascertain their workload.

• A = Authority. Ensure that other people know that the person you’re delegating to has been given the authority to complete this task. You might just tell people that they will need to provide this person with information and support, or you might give them a written ‘licence’ or acting rank. Without confirmation of authority, their task may be much harder to perform.

• R = Responsibility. This is often the hardest one. You are delegating something that you have a responsibility to get done, so you must ensure that the person you delegate to understands that they are responsible to you for doing the task. One of the best ways to give the responsibility is to make it very clear that you are sharing the credit for the successful outcome.

For more about delegating to motivate people, see Secret 4.7.

The more you can delegate properly the more you can get done, so learn to love delegating.

1.6 Lead by example

We have already established that it is easier for you if your people want to follow you rather than be ‘the managed’. You have to set a good example for people to copy. Otherwise, you are giving the contradictory message, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.”

• Leading by example doesn’t mean that you have to do or even be able to do the jobs of everyone who works for you.

• Leading by example doesn’t mean that you have to get as ‘grimy’ as they may have to on a daily basis.

• Leading by example doesn’t mean that you have to earn the same as they do. The extra responsibilities of being the boss usually command a higher rate of pay.

one minute wonder The difficult balancing act is to let people see that you have achieved your elevated position on merit, without making them resent you for the trappings of that achievement. If you can get this balance right, then you are a leader!

What leading by example does mean

You have to set an example all day, every day. People really notice and remember if you fail to ‘walk the talk’.

1.7 Think about TOM

TOM is an acronym. It sets out three simple to remember principles that help you manage people effectively. The three principles of TOM are Trust, Objectives and Motivation.

• Trust. You need to build trust with your people. Note the emphasis on trust with, i.e. you trust them and they trust you. You can do this by observing, questioning, listening to and socializing with your people. Manage their expectations and keep your word. Always be reasonable. Building trust takes time, and you don’t command trust just because of your rank or job title. Avoid ‘micro-management’ – don’t expect hourly progress reports. Step back and let people get on without your constant supervision.

• Objectives. You need to set objectives that have clear desired outcomes. These can be short-, medium- or long-term objectives. They can be based around activity and effort or results, as appropriate, so long as the way you will (and therefore the individual can) assess success is clearly understood. Chapter 3 covers the required elements of a good objective.

• Motivation. You must ensure that the individual has adequate motivation. Recognize that sometimes the responsibility alone is motivation enough and that at other times it will not be. Like the objective, the motivation can be short or long term: “If you get all this filing done today, you can do the research you enjoy tomorrow. If you get all the research finished by the end of the day tomorrow, you can have Wednesday afternoon off!”

Business gurus who have successfully managed people in the real world agree with the TOM approach:

“If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings [Trust] and put compensation as a carrier behind it [Motivation] you almost don’t have to manage them” [just set the Objectives] Jack Welch, former Chairman and CEO of General Electric

“I have no secret. There are no rules to follow in business. I just work hard [set and achieve Objectives] and, as I always have done, believe I can do it. [Trust myself] Most of all, though, I try to have fun” [Motivation] Sir Richard Branson, Chairman of Virgin Group

“Tell them what you want [Objectives], reward them for it [Motivation], and get out of the way” [Trust] Gordon Bethune, former CEO of Continental Airlines

Agree objectives, check people are motivated and then get out of the way!

1.8 Create a ROWE

A Results Orientated Work Environment – or ROWE for short – is a new idea that is gaining ground in the information and Internet age. The main principle behind ROWE is to create a working environment that is orientated to recognizing and rewarding results rather than time.

In order to create a ROWE, the manager has to set specific, measurable objectives that lead to results that can be tested and accepted. (See Chapter 3 for more about setting objectives.) The key concept in a ROWE is the quality standard by which you, the manager, will assess whether the task has been completed, and therefore whether the reward for it will be released.

Obviously the faster a person can complete a task to the required standard, the sooner they earn the reward. This challenge in itself encourages people to work with a higher level of motivation.

ROWE doesn’t work for all roles. For example, a shop assistant has to be present while the shop is open, even if there are no customers. However, for roles that can be done on a ROWE basis, the approach has distinct benefits.

one minute wonder Consider what you want the people who work for you to achieve…today…and this week. Does it really require them to be in the office, or is being in the office actually a hindrance to their achievement? If so…think ROWE!

• People can manage their own workloads and don’t need to ask your permission to come and go. Therefore you don’t need to constantly supervise and monitor their work rate and attendance.

• People can earn more if they want to, which is another motivating factor.

• Reward is based on actual output, not hours, so productivity is very likely to rise.

• ROWE increases everyone’s focus on quality.

• ROWE is an adaptive solution to overwork – people are less likely to take on work they do not intend to complete.

ROWE works best if the people you manage are not a team, and the output of each is independent of others. However, you can create a team ROWE – a team of bricklayers, for example, can agree a ‘contract price’ for the job. They will be far more reliable than a team of bricklayers paid by the hour who have, by definition, a vested interest in dragging out the job to take up more hours.

A work environment orientated to results has many benefits over one based on the number of hours worked.

Create a great team

If you have the opportunity, form your people into a team. Teams don’t occur naturally; you have to make a concerted effort to develop a team ethos. This chapter is mostly concerned with creating a team from a group of individuals. The whole point of a team is ‘synergy’, which means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, teamwork will produce a better result than when individual people work towards individual goals.

2.1 AIM to pick the right person for the job

Managing people is a whole lot easier if you have the right people from the outset. If you have the opportunity to pick and choose your people, then this secret will help you to take advantage of that opportunity. There are three fundamental steps to picking the right people – Assess, Identify and Motivate – or AIM for short.

1 Assess what ‘right’ is. Analyse what you want this person to do and create a Job Description. What level of skills and knowledge do they need? For instance, does this person need to be ‘familiar with’ or ‘expert with’ Microsoft Office Tools? What personal attributes will they need to be successful and satisfied? If the team is working in an ever-changing environment, you will need a different type of person to someone who would suit a team whose predominant environment is bureaucratic and slow moving. What type of person will fit in with your style of management? If you like empowering people, someone who needs constant reassurance will be unhappy. What type of person

“Genius is the ability to pick the right person for the job and then let them get on with it” Anonymous

will fit in with the other team members? This is tricky, because sometimes someone who is similar is best, and at other times someone who complements the other team members is best.

2 Identify your options and identify the ‘right’ person. Now you have to find some potential recruits. You can use the answers you came up with in section 1 above to draft an advertisement that helps people to know if they are qualified and whether the job is the type they’d want. Once you have some people to interview, you can again use the answers from section 1 to help you find and assess evidence of the person’s competence to do what you need them to do.

3 Motivate that person to want to join your team. Once you have found the person you think is right, you have to ‘sell’ them the opportunity. Up until now you have been focusing on your needs, but now you need to focus on their needs. See Secret 4.3 to help you here.

You will notice that the three steps above – Assess, Identify, Motivate – spell out the word AIM. It is rather like throwing a basketball – if you AIM properly you will score!

Pick the right person for the job, and they will be a happy person, which in turn will make you a happy manager!

2.2 Get the team performing quickly

The ‘Tuckman Model’ identifies several stages that a team goes through before it starts performing properly. The stages – referred to as Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing – will happen naturally, but you can speed up the process.

1 Forming stage. Forming is the introduction process, when people are literally finding out who is who, learning names, job titles, roles and ranks, and other people’s history. In order to get this stage successfully completed as quickly as possible, deliberately hold a ‘forming’ meeting. Ask everyone to introduce themselves and share this information.

case study A manager asked me to run a teambuilding course for his part-time IT project team. The team had spent 11 months and many thousands of pounds but had achieved nothing at all. Over two days of teambuilding, the team members properly introduced

2 Storming stage. The stage where, confident they are meant to be here, people start to ‘jockey for position’ – to establish their credibility in the team. Some will try to push themselves forward because they want power or influence; others will deliberately keep a low profile because they are shy, diffident or lacking in confidence. You need to set up activities that allow people to find their level of comfort – for example any of the teambuilding exercises you can find on websites such as www.businessballs.com.

3 Norming stage. This is when you start to establish the rules of behaviour between team members, and their relationships with you and people outside. The Norming phase can take quite a long time if left to happen naturally because the rules will be established by a combination of ‘trial and error’ and ‘custom and practice’. Take control by holding a team meeting to set up a formal ‘team charter’. See Secret 2.4 for more details.

4 Performing stage. Performing is the stage when the team is getting on with the tasks in hand. Milestones are reached, targets are met, internal friction is minimal, people are smiling and achieving.

Help your people get through the early stages of teambuilding quickly.

themselves to each other for the first time; they did a couple of exercises that allowed them to ‘storm’; and they produced their own team charter. They went on to achieve more in the following six weeks than they had in the previous 11 months.

2.3 Create a team identity

Sports teams nearly always have a team name, whether it’s British Lions (rugby union team), the Mumbai Champs (cricket team), the Tianjin Lions (baseball team) or the Mamelodi Sundowns (soccer team). Teams have names because it gives them a sense of being a team and it makes the members feel as if they ‘belong’!

Even if the people on your team are scattered across several departments of the organization, they can work together happily if they have a sense of shared identity. You should create a team identity – a team name, a team logo, a team motto, a team vision and even a team ‘strip’ or uniform.

Get your team together and suggest the idea: they’ll probably like it. You can ask them to work in pairs or small groups to select an appropriate name, devise a logo, think up a motto and design a ‘uniform’. They can each present their suggestions to the rest of the team and you can have a vote for the most popular. Opposite are some guidelines you can give them.

• Team name. Keep it short and simple, for example The ‘Hey!’ Team rather than the Global Internal Corporate Communications Team. Go for something descriptive of the team’s role or style, such as The Paper Tigers for an archive team. Try to find something different or even unique. Whereas lots of organizations have a Quality Team, why not call it The DriFTers, standing for Do it Right First Time? Alliterative or punning names are usually successful – the Rajasthan Royals or Coach and Courses for your training team. Also make sure the name is easy to pronounce and spell in the language your team uses – a good example of a ‘team’ that adopted an easier name identity is the British Royal Family, who changed their surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917.

• Team logo. Keep the logo simple so that it stays recognizable when reduced in size on memos or polo shirts. Ideally, create one in black and white or primary colours so it can easily be photocopied and replicated if you want to have it embroidered, painted or printed. Look at famous logos like UPS, Chanel, Citroën, Nike, Puma, BMW or the BBC for inspiration – all use simple, strong shapes and colours.

• Team motto. Keep it short and informative of the team ethos. Think about famous slogans such as Avis’s “We try Harder”.

• Team ‘uniform’. You can create a team ‘uniform’ with clothing and accessories, such as hats, polo shirts, badges, buttons, umbrellas, document bags, and so on. Items such as these are all relatively cheap, unisex and often more popular and fun than a top-to-toe uniform.

Get your people involved in creating a team identity.

2.4 Create a team charter

In Secret 2.2 we looked at the Tuckman Model (Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing). The creation of a team charter will help you through the Storming and Norming phases, allowing people to get on with the business of Performing.

A team charter is a set of rules, or norms of behaviour, that clearly sets out the acceptable behaviour among members of the team (including you as the team leader). Depending on the circumstances, it might also set out acceptable behaviour to other ‘stakeholders’ – internal departments, customers, competitors, shareholders, patients and so on.

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