First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

by Gallup Press

The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.

I think the best a manager can do is to make each person comfortable with who they are.

How can you manage people if you don’t know them — their style, their motivation, their personal situation?

people want to feel understood. Treating them differently is part of helping them feel unique.

when someone has let me down, I don’t think it is right to punish those who haven’t by creating some new rule or policy.

Don’t overpromote people. Pay them well for what they do, and make it rewarding, in every way, for them to keep doing what they are doing.

Make very few promises to your people, and keep them all.

A manager has got to remember that he is on stage every day. His people are watching him. Everything he does, everything he says, and the way he says it, sends off clues to his employees. These clues affect performance. So never forget you are on that stage.

no matter what your business, the only way to generate enduring profits is to begin by building the kind of work environment that attracts, focuses and keeps talented employees.

if a company is bleeding people, it is bleeding value.

Talk about the customer. Highlight the right heroes. Treat people with respect. Listen.

if your relationship with your manager is fractured, then no amount of in-chair massaging or company-sponsored dog walking will persuade you to stay and perform. It is better to work for a great manager in an old-fashioned company than for a terrible manager in a company offering an enlightened, employee-focused culture.

I don’t think you can be insecure and a good manager. It makes him compete with his own people.

employees don’t put their faith in the myths of “great companies” or “great leaders.” For employees, there are only managers: great ones, poor ones and many in between.

one of the most valuable commodities a company can possess is the employees’ “benefit of the doubt.” If employees are willing to offer their company the benefit of the doubt, they will give every new initiative a fighting chance, no matter how sensitive or controversial it might be.

if the employee doesn’t know what is expected of him as an individual (Base Camp), then you shouldn’t ask him to get excited about playing on a team (Camp 2). If he feels as though he is in the wrong role (Camp 1), don’t pander to him by telling him how important his innovative ideas are to the company’s reengineering efforts (Camp 3). If he doesn’t know what his manager thinks of him as an individual (Camp 1), don’t confuse him by challenging him to become part of the new “learning organization” (Camp 3).

People don’t change that much. Don’t waste time trying to put in what was left out. Try to draw out what was left in. That is hard enough.

The manager role is to reach inside each employee and release his unique talents into performance. This role is best played one employee at a time — one manager asking questions of, listening to and working with one employee.

The core of the manager role consists of those four activities: selecting a person, setting expectations, motivating him and developing him.

Great managers are not miniexecutives waiting for leadership to be thrust upon them. Great leaders are not simply managers who have developed sophistication. The core activities of a manager and a leader are simply different. It is entirely possible for a person to be a brilliant manager and a terrible leader. But it is just as possible for a person to excel as a leader and fail as a manager. And, of course, a few exceptionally talented individuals excel at both.

A company should not force every manager to manage his people exactly the same way. Each manager will, and should, employ his own style. What a company can and should do is keep every manager focused on the four core activities of the catalyst role: select a person, set expectations, motivate the person and develop the person.

In the minds of great managers, every role performed at excellence deserves respect. Every role has its own nobility.

an organization exists for a purpose and that that purpose is performance — with “performance” defined as any outcome that is deemed valuable by either an external or internal customer.

the manager’s most basic responsibility is not to help each person grow. It is not to provide an environment in which each person feels significant and special. These are worthy methods, but they are not the point. The point is to focus people toward performance.

Define the right outcomes and then let each person find his own route toward those outcomes.

if, fundamentally, you don’t trust people, then there is no line, no point in time beyond which people suddenly become trustworthy. Mistrust concerns the future. If you are innately skeptical of other people’s motives, then no amount of good behavior in the past will ever truly convince you that they are not just about to disappoint you. Suspicion is a permanent condition.

All roles demand some level of accuracy or safety, and therefore, all roles require employees to execute some standardized steps. Great managers know that it is their responsibility to ensure that their employees know these steps and can execute them perfectly. If that flies in the face of individuality, so be it.

Standards enable us to communicate.

Standards drive learning.

standards fuel creativity.

Connections mean networks, and networks require standards.

Concern and warmth, if you are going to attempt them, must be genuine emotions. And a script, even when designed with the best of intentions, makes it supremely difficult to convince a customer that you are genuine, even when you are.