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inevitable: new One of my first bosses warned me that the most common fault of new managers is that they tend to over-manage. Hearing this prophecy isn’t likely to make a great deal of difference. We humans are destined to learn the hard way. But it’s so universally true that I’m obligated to tell you. And you in turn must tell anyone you promote. When you do anything for the first time you are bound to be anxious about doing things right. You want to avoid looking like a fool. You want people to think you know exactly what you’re doing. Think: first date, first day at a new job, first sex. But compensating by trying to manage and control every detail of your fiefdom is a big mistake. You need to lean the other way, giving your staff lots of room to grow. |
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Do you remember learning to ride a bike? Balance is not really a skill you can teach. Each kid has to find it for himself. Every bike lesson I’ve been a part of has included exchanges like, "Don’t let go!" followed closely by, "Don’t worry, I’ve got you." But, of course, as the teacher, you have to let go. The reason to avoid over-managing is because the kid will never learn to ride the bike if you don’t let go. And if you don’t let go of the bike, the child is going to start making some assumptions:
Either assumption will discourage growth. |
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Our culture would have us believe that being able to accept a loss is tantamount to setting yourself up to lose. But not everyone can win all the time; obsessing about winning adds an unnecessary layer of pressure that constricts body and spirit and, ultimately, robs you of the freedom to do your best. -- Phil Jackson, former Chicago Bulls’ head coach, in Scared Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior
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As a manager, growing people is what you do. Even if we weren’t living in an era of raging technological change, doing the same thing in the same way day after day makes for dull employees. Your company needs dynamic, thinking, growing, learning people if it is going to survive. Things can’t stay the same. There is no such thing as equilibrium in the business world. If you are making a lavish profit making shoes, soon there will be a flood of people moving into the shoe business. If making a healthy profit in shoes is something any dull person can do, then your lavish profit will shrink to zero as more companies move in. Of course if your staff is full of clever, ingenious, bold people: They’ll keep creating more comfortable, attractive, durable shoes that will keep the customers flocking to your product. But when the competition sees that, they’ll just go out and hire their own clever people. Maybe yours. So, you have to:
The key words here, "grow," "challenge," "learn," "confidence," all have something very basic in common: Failure. |
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Failure is an essential part of growth. If nothing else, failure is necessary to mark the growth. Imagine a track meet where the pole-vaulters all clear the bar at 17 feet, 6 inches, and then call it a day. How high can they go? We don’t know. They don’t know how high they can go until they fail. And that only tells them how high they can vault today. If they practice all week they are going to have to fail again next Saturday to see what progress they’ve made. |
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And the runner who wins every race doesn’t really know how good she is until she moves into tougher competition. When she gets beat, she’ll know how good she is. Of course, there is a stigma to losing or failing. In junior high, my daughter Sara hated the math portions of achievement tests because there were always problems that she couldn’t solve. In fact, she was outraged that the tests included problems that she hadn’t been taught how to do. Again, in order to measure the skill level of the most skilled participant, the test needs to go far enough to cause that person to fail. If you successfully answer all the questions, you are taking the wrong test. If someone on your staff successfully completes every assignment, you need to give them tougher assignments. Growing and learning require reaching, aiming for ever higher goals. If you always succeed in meeting your goals, then your goals are too low. |
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The Wright brothers were good at fixing bicycles. It was second nature to them. So, they decided to build an airplane. And they failed. And then they failed some more. And then they succeeded. They could have just kept fixing bikes. You’ll need your staff to feel comfortable about failing in plain sight. They’ll need to know who you are and where you are coming from. As a new manager, you are going to immediately start building your reputation. The first impressions people get are pretty important. It’s much easier to make an impression than to change an impression. Giving signs that you don’t have faith in your staff is a bad first impression. Yes, you need time to sort things out and figure out who’s who. But in most cases they will have been successfully, doing their jobs long before you showed up. Assume that they know what they’re doing. Ask questions. Ask for ideas. Learn as much as you can from them, but understand that they have good reason to be suspicious of you and your intentions. |
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Linguistically, "micro-manage" should be a neutral term, but I’ve never heard it used in a positive way. Needing to know every detail of everything happening in your area is not an efficient use of your time. And it sends signals that you have little faith or trust in your staff. As soon as you can, start looking for ways to give away as many responsibilities and tasks as you can. Think about what things could be done by your staff that you are doing now. Are you working long hours and not getting to everything you should be doing? Aren’t there people on your staff who could handle inventory and ordering, training, new employee orientation, scheduling, dealing with vendors, exploring technological improvements? |
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What tasks are there in your area that could be a challenge and a welcome change of pace for someone on your staff? It could be a learning experience for them, a way for you to concretely express your confidence in them, and maybe a chance to free up some of your time for those big picture things you should be doing. I’m one hundred percent certain that the default mode for humans is to want to do a good job, and that most people would like to be proud of the job they do. Don’t get in the way of this instinct. If you have an employee, who is not in this mode it is your job to find out what got in the way. If you are pushing a car down a hill, you can make it go faster by pushing it harder or by releasing the parking brake. |
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One of the most fun responsibilities to share is performance evaluations. After reading an inspiring article in a trade magazine about a "360 degree" evaluation process, I devised my own scheme to get my staff involved. First, I had my team leaders each write down four or five characteristics of an excellent staff member. Some actually picked a particular employee and wrote down the positive traits they had observed. Others imagined a composite made up of the best traits of the whole crew. |
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Then I consolidated the lists into a single list of twenty-five positive traits and added a rating scale of one to seven down the side of the page. Then I met with the staff in groups of twenty and described how the list was created. Each person got three copies. The first copy was for them to evaluate themselves. The second was for them to evaluate the person sitting two seats to the left of them. The third was for them to evaluate their team leader or me. Although the plan had some bugs, it was a great experience. I was really impressed that the staffers evaluating me pulled no punches. I scored lowest in "Arrives on time and is ready to work." Others pointed out that I fell short in the area of "Shares knowledge with others." My first impulse was to be defensive. But I got over it and tried to improve in those areas.:
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© Copyright 1999, 2000 by Wayne Bonekemper |
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