Answer Happy

Essentials of Management - MANAGING YOURSELF Courtesy of Various Wall Street Journals Source by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor For the new manager, the transition can be especially jarring. Odds are you were made manager in part because of your own successes. You performed splendidly you surpassed everyone's expectations, you achieved superior results, you were the office star. You deserved a reward. As a manager, you have to stop thinking about your own success and start thinking about the groups. You can no longer afford to look at those around you as competitors, or as potential obstacles on your way to advancement. Instead, they have become your road to advancement. Your new job requires you to nurture them, to coach them, to help them succeed, and ultimately to take satisfaction from their collective success rather than your own singular success. To do that, you need to be self-aware, self-confident, secure, and grounded. Think about the failings of managers around you. In many ways, this challenge - managing yourself - is the greatest challenge you face. Human beings are unique in their capacity for self-awareness. We can rise above ourselves, analyze our actions, and choose a direction that's different from that dictated by our emotional needs, our gut instincts, our past habits, or our history. But having the capacity for self-awareness is different from actually being self-aware. Sorting out distinctions between what feels right and what is right, and then acting on those distinctions is a task. For the manager, the challenge becomes doubly complex. You must constantly ask yourself: Am I doing this because it is right for me? Or because it is right for the organization? • Consider these everyday occurrences: Your boss praises a project recently completed by your group. Do you: (1) bask in the glory of the moment? Or (2) use it as an opportunity to point out the work of one or two people in your group who made exceptional contributions? You have two candidates for a job opening. One is qualified for the job, and particularly known for loyalty. The other is even more qualified, ambitious, and eager to advance in the organization. Whom do you choose? One of your subordinates develops a plan that you fully approve and that later turns out to be flawed. Do you: (1) accept complete responsibility for having approved the plan or (2) accept responsibility in public but subtly let it be known that your subordinates "let you down." You have an employee who has increasingly shown herself to be smarter, faster, more creative and willing to work longer hours than anyone else in your group - including yourself. Do you: (1) constantly look for new ways to showcase her talents, or (2) encourage her to ease up for fear she may be overshadowing you and her fellow employees. Managing yourself and your relations and your personal brand is increasingly important Page 1 of 5 Essentials of Management - MANAGING YOURSELF Courtesy of Various Wall Street Journals Source by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor As these examples show, doing the "right" thing for your organization sometimes require you to do things that may feel "wrong" for you. To make the right decision you need to feel secure in your job. To do the right thing, you need to be confident that if you take actions in the best interest of the organization, you'll be rewarded in the long run. You may be the best manager around, but that doesn't mean your boss is. What if he or she chooses to give your job to a more ambitious, and less costly, subordinate? Giving others credit, hiring ambitious employees, accepting responsibility for mistakes others make, or allowing subordinates to shine may all be actions that are good for the organization but that, in the wrong circumstances, could hurt you. Indeed, good management has at its core a fundamental conflict. The best managers are always striving to create such well-functioning organizations that they become unnecessary. If they succeed, they become redundant. CONTROL YOURSELF As a manager you will quickly find that many of the instincts and responses that enabled you to succeed in the workplace now need to be suppressed. Particularly as a new manager, you may still be thinking about how to get yourself ahead, instead of your group. Some advice on how to respond: • Resist the urge to always win. Don't insist on always making good ideas even better. • Don't be too judgmental. . Avoid comments designed to show how smart or knowledgeable you are. • Don't speak when angry. . Don't withhold important information. • Don't claim undue credit or fail to give proper recognition. • Don't make excuses. • • . Be willing to admit mistakes. Listen. MANAGE YOURSELF Let's face it: it's harder to evaluate yourself own strengths and weaknesses that it is those of your employees. You need to understand where you fit in the organization, what your contributions are, when you are contributing to better performance, and when you are discouraging it. Yet the natural human tendencies toward denial and self-delusion can make that an exceedingly murky task. As a result you need to set up your own mechanisms for encouraging useful feedback. A few suggested approaches. First, an open-door policy, the people you work with need to know Managing yourself and your relations and your personal brand is increasingly important Page 2 of 5
Essentials of Management - MANAGING YOURSELF Courtesy of Various Wall Street Journals Source by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor you are approachable. They should feel comfortable coming in to raise questions, to challenge you, or to deliver bad news. And they need to know that if they walk through that door with bad news you won't "shoot the messenger." It's fine to get irritated with people who waste your time asking questions that they know, or at least should know, the answer to. But if you show irritation with the bearer of bad news, or with the person who raises questions about decisions you've made or actions you've taken, you are only hurting yourself. By keeping an open door and encouraging people to come in and challenge you, you are ensuring important feedback that help you stay on top of what's going on in your organization, and also helps you monitor your own performance. Even with an open-door policy, people will shy away from challenging their boss, or sugarcoat the messages they deliver. To guard against that, make sure there are one or two people on your team whom you trust, and who will act as your truth tellers. You may not always enjoy what they have to say; but you'll benefit from their counsel. As a more formal practice, it's also a good idea to do "360 degree" performance reviews. Just as you evaluate your employees' performance, you should ask your employees to evaluate yours. As an option, have an intermediary collect the evaluations on an anonymous basis, and then summarize the key points for you. You're almost certain to learn one or more things you can do to improve your own performance that you wouldn't have discovered on your own. MANAGING THE BOSS The odds are high that at some point during your career, you'll work for a bad manager. That's okay. Good managers can still succeed, even with bad bosses. But simply being a good manager may not be enough to ensure your survival. First, who is the boss? In a highly matrix organization, you will likely have multiple bosses. Or at least multiple people who think they are your boss. Or more important, multiple people whose opinions will matter when it comes time to evaluate you, compensate you, promote you, etc. If you are in a large organization, there could be a half dozen people to whom you report in one form or another. Step two is to go to each of those bosses for input. Ask them what you can do to help them or to make their job easier. Get their advice on how they think you should do you job. If you start by putting your bosses at ease, let them know you're there to make them look better, you'll often find them supportive of you in return. Step three is to keep all your bosses well informed. In talking with your bosses, be sure to find out how each of them wants to get information from you. You may have to tailor your reports to suit the different needs of different bosses, but in the long run, it's worth it. Also, be quick to inform your bosses when your plans go awry. No one likes negative surprises they can often lead to public humiliation. It's a good policy to try to make certain that any bad information Managing yourself and your relations and your personal brand is increasingly important Page 3 of 5 Essentials of Management - MANAGING YOURSELF Courtesy of Various Wall Street Journals Source by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor about your organization comes from you first. You may be reluctant to be the bearer of bad tidings, but it will go over far better if you bear it than if someone else does. Finally, even in private, don't underestimate or be overly critical of your boss. This management stuff isn't easy. Cut your employer a little slack for occasional missteps, in the hope that your employee will do the same for you. BEING A WOMAN IN THE WORKPLACE As a manager, it's your responsibility to avoid creating an overly "male" culture that discriminates against those who use such behaviors. But as a woman, you'd be smart to avoid or downplay these behaviors. Mistake number one, for instance, men tend to approach the workplace as a sporting match, and their goal is to win. Women tend to approach it more like an event, a picnic, a concert, a fund raiser where everyone comes together for the day to play nicely. In women's desire to create win-win situations, they unknowingly create win-lose ones, where they're the losers. Speech patterns can be another critical distinction. Avoid couching statements as questions, using minimizing words like "I just..." or "It was only...." or excessively apologizing. And how you look matters too, this can include smiling inappropriately and not just garment appearance BUILDING YOUR OWN BRAND If you follow all the lessons shared thus far, will it guarantee you a life of management success? The answer is: no. That means it's more important than ever for you to keep your job in perspective. You need to devote time and energy to those relationships along your way. You also need to pay attention to developing yourself, so if your current job disappears you are ready for the challenges of a new one. Think of your life as a continuing education, i which you strive to accumulate skills and experiences that will be useful in the next phase. Think of yourself as a brand, and you are the brand manager, burnishing the qualities that will increase your value over time. Successful people build continuous learning into the way they live...they experiment. They are not satisfied with what they did yesterday. The very least they demand of themselves is that they do better, whatever they do, and more often, they demand of themselves that they do it differently. Managing yourself and your relations and your personal brand is increasingly important Page 4 of 5
Essentials of Management - MANAGING YOURSELF Courtesy of Various Wall Street Journals Source by: Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor LEARNING TO DELEGATE Delegating is one of the most important things you must do as a manager. Imagine that you find yourself managing a group of people, and that after careful analysis, you come to the conclusion that you are better than any of them at every task the group is asked to take on. If you truly are better than everyone at everything what do you do? Do it all yourself? The answer, of course, is no. If you try to do it yourself, you'll accomplish very little indeed. Instead you need to understand and employ what economists call the theory of "comparative advantage." You need to decide where each employee can contribute the most value they are capable of contributing, relative to the others. And most important, you need to decide where you can contribute most, and focus your efforts there. Understanding comparative advantage is the key to successful delegation. Often failure to delegate hides fear and insecurity. Management is big and amorphous, and it's not always easy to tell whether one is succeeding at it, or failing. Unwillingness to delegate is one of the biggest causes of management failure. Here are two brief things to keep in mind as you consider delegating responsibilities: Hold each of your employees to the highest standard he or she can achieve, not to the standard you would achieve if you held that job; and your ultimate success is creating an organization in which you are redundant. Finally, great leaders gain authority by giving it away. Page 5 of 5