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.

Why this newfound interest? They have started to realize that whether software designer or delivery truck driver, accountant or hotel housekeeper, the most valuable aspects of jobs are now, as Thomas Stewart describes in Intellectual Capital, “the most essentially human tasks: sensing, judging, creating, and building relationships.” This means that a great deal of a company’s value now lies “between the ears of its employees.” And this means that when someone leaves a company, he takes his value with him — more often than not, straight to the competition.

across many different companies. Second, the meta-analysis revealed that employees rated the items differently depending on which business unit they worked for rather than which company. This meant that, for the most part, these 12 opinions were being formed by the employees’ immediate manager rather than by the policies or procedures of the overall company.

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.

You have to be able to set consistent expectations for all your people, yet at the same time, treat each person differently. You have to be able to make each person feel as though he is in a role that uses his talents while simultaneously challenging him to grow. You have to care about each person, praise each person, and, if necessary, terminate a person you have cared about and praised.

They know that there is a limit to how much remolding they can do to someone. But they don’t bemoan these differences and try to grind them down. Instead, they capitalize on them. They try to help each person become more and more of who he already is. Simply put, this is the one insight we heard echoed by tens of thousands of great managers: 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. This insight is the source of their wisdom. It explains everything they do with and for their people. It is the foundation of their success as managers.

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. Multiplied a thousandfold, this one-by-one-by-one role is the company’s power supply.

In this sense, the manager role is the “catalyst” role. As with all catalysts, the manager’s function is to speed up the reaction between two substances, thus creating the desired end product. Specifically, the manager creates performance in each employee by speeding up the reaction between the employee’s talents and the company’s goals and between the employee’s talents and the customers’ needs. When hundreds of managers play this role well, the company becomes strong, one employee at a time.

These items provide the detail for the catalyst role. To warrant positive responses to these items from his employees, a manager must be able to do four activities extremely well: select a person, set expectations, motivate the person and develop the person. These four activities are the manager’s most important responsibilities. You might have all the vision, charisma and intelligence in the world, but if you cannot perform these four activities well, you will never excel as a manager.

The most important difference between a great manager and a great leader is one of focus. Great managers look inward. They look inside the company; into each individual; into differences in the style, goals, needs and motivation of each person. These differences are small and subtle, but great managers need to pay attention to them. These subtle differences guide them toward the right way to release each person’s unique talents into performance. Great leaders, by contrast, look outward. They look out at the competition, out at the future and out at alternative routes forward. They focus on broad patterns, finding connections and cracks, and then they press home their advantage where the resistance is weakest. They must be visionaries, strategic thinkers and activators. When played well, this is, without doubt, a critical role. But it doesn’t have much to do with the challenge of turning one individual’s talents into performance.

And, of course, a few exceptionally talented individuals excel at both.

When selecting someone, they select for talent … not simply experience, intelligence or determination. • When setting expectations, they define the right outcomes … not the right steps. • When motivating someone, they focus on strengths … not on weaknesses. • When developing someone, they help him find the right fit … not simply the next rung on the ladder.

Great managers disagree with this definition of talent. It is too narrow, too specialized. Instead, they define a talent as “a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied.” The emphasis here is on the word recurring. Your talents, they say, are the behaviors you find yourself doing often. You have a mental filter that sifts through your world, forcing you to pay attention to some stimuli, while others slip past you unnoticed. Your instinctive ability to remember names, rather than just faces, is a talent. Your need to alphabetize your spice rack and color-code your wardrobe is a talent. So is your love of crossword puzzles or your fascination with risk or your impatience. Any recurring patterns of behavior that can be productively applied are talents. The key to excellent performance, of course, is finding the match between your talents and your role.

While experience, brainpower and willpower all affect performance significantly, only the presence of the right talents — recurring patterns of behavior that fit the role — can account for this range in performance. Only the presence of talents can explain why, all other factors being equal, some people excel in the role and some struggle.

So this is their dilemma: The manager must retain control and focus people on performance. But she is bound by her belief that she cannot force everyone to perform in the same way. The solution is as elegant as it is efficient: Define the right outcomes and then let each person find his own route toward those outcomes.

This is a teaching example, but it could apply to any role. Any attempt to impose the “one best way” is doomed to fail. First, it is inefficient. The one best way has to fight against the unique, grooved four-lane highways each individual possesses. Second, it is demeaning. By providing all the answers, it prevents each individual from perfecting and taking responsibility for her own style. Third, it kills learning. Every time you make a rule, you take away a choice. And choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.

Adrian P., the manager of two thriving car dealerships, describes it this way: “The hardest thing about being a manager is realizing that your people will not do things the way that you would. But get used to it. Because if you try to force them to, then two things happen. They become resentful — they don’t want to do it. And they become dependent — they can’t do it. Neither of these is terribly productive for the long haul.” In your attempts

The best managers avoid all of these temptations. They know that the manager’s challenge is not to perfect people but to capitalize on each person’s uniqueness. They select for talent, no matter how simple the role appears. Their first instinct is to trust the people they have selected. And they believe that, with enough thought, even intangibles like customer satisfaction and employee morale can be defined in terms of outcomes. However, this does not mean they dismiss the need for steps. They don’t. A manager’s basic responsibility is to turn talent into performance. Certain required steps can often serve as the platform for that performance.

This is a banking story, but it could just as well have been a story about jet engine manufacturing, theme park ride design, subway train operation or scuba-diving instruction. 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. Unrestrained empowerment can be a value killer.

Counterintuitively, standards fuel creativity. Take music as an example. There is no right way to structure sounds. But in Western Europe in the late 16th century, a structured scale gradually became standard. This scale, called a chromatic scale, used 12 tones per octave, with each tone being 100 cents apart in pitch — represented by the seven white keys and five black keys on a piano keyboard. On the surface, this sounds as though it would restrict composers’ genius. But the opposite was true. Being limited to just 12 tones didn’t dampen creativity; it fostered creativity. The chromatic scale and its formal notation system spawned two centuries of the most prolific and original compositions. Composers as diverse as Vivaldi, Miles Davis, Stravinsky and Madonna all used the standard chromatic scale to give voice to the unique music playing in their minds. Standards, then, are the code in which human collaboration and discovery are written. Great managers know that if they want to build a cooperative, creative organization, they will have to ensure that their employees use the relevant codes. Lawyers must study case law. Air traffic controllers have to learn the standard navigational protocols. Accountants have to learn the rules of double-entry bookkeeping.

“You can’t draw up plays and then just plug your players in. No matter how well you have designed your play book, it’s useless if you don’t know which plays your players can run. When I draw up my play book, I always go from the players to the plays.” When defining the right outcomes for their people, great managers do the same. They go from the players to the plays.

device company, describes it in even more pragmatic terms: “I deliberately look for something to like about each of my people. In one, I might like his sense of humor. In another, I might like the way he talks about his kids. In another, I’ll enjoy her patience or the way she handles pressure. Of course, there’s a bunch of stuff about each of them that can get on my nerves. If I’m not deliberate about looking for what I like, the bad stuff might start coming to mind first.”

Third, this story describes a doomed relationship. The conventional manager genuinely wants to bring out the best in the employee, but she chooses to do so by focusing on fixing the employee’s weaknesses. The employee probably possesses many strengths, but the manager ends up characterizing him by the few areas where he struggles. This is the same dynamic that often proves the undoing of other failed relationships. Have you ever suffered through a bad relationship — the kind of relationship where the pressures of each day sapped your energy and made you a stranger to yourself? If you can stand to, think back to how you felt during that relationship and remember: A bad relationship is rarely one where your partner didn’t know you very well. Most often, a bad relationship is one where your partner came to know you very well indeed … and wished you weren’t that way. Perhaps your partner wanted to perfect you. Perhaps you were simply incompatible and your weaknesses grated on each other. Perhaps your partner was a person who simply enjoyed pointing out other people’s failings. Whatever the cause, you ended up feeling as though you were being defined by things you did not do rather than by things you did do. And that felt awful. This is the same feeling that many managers unwittingly create in their employees. Even when working with their most productive employees, they still spend most of their time talking about each person’s areas of nontalent and how to eradicate them. No m...

For all of these reasons, great managers reject conventional wisdom’s story. Their rejection does not mean that they think all persistence is wasted. It simply means that persistence focused primarily on nontalents is wasted. Nor does their rejection mean that they ignore a person’s weaknesses. Each employee has areas where she struggles, and these areas must be dealt with. We will describe in more detail how great managers deal with a person’s weaknesses later in this chapter. But it does mean that great managers are aggressive in trying to identify each person’s talents and to help her cultivate those talents. This is how they do it: They believe that casting is everything. They manage by exception. And they spend the

There’s a great deal you can learn from spending time with your strugglers. You can learn why certain systems are hard to operate. You can learn why initiatives

They are managing around the employee’s weakness so they can spend time focusing on his strengths. As with all focus-on-strength strategies, devising a support system is more productive and more fun than trying to fix the weakness.

Jeff B., the software sales manager, is not only a sincere, passionate and conceptual man, he is also, it turns out, a rotten planner. “I’ve never been good at tactics,” he confesses. “I am excellent at ground zero, building trust face-to-face. And I am excellent at 20,000 feet, finding patterns, playing out scenarios. But I’m terrible in between. That’s where Tony’s so good. When we look at a situation, he asks different questions than me. I’ll ask, ‘What if?’ or, ‘Why not?’ He’ll ask, ‘How many?’ or, ‘When?’ or, ‘Prove it.’ If I went to the board with my half-baked ideas, I’d get shot down every time. But with the two of us working on the same idea, our case ends up looking so convincing, they haven’t been able to turn us down once. As I say to Tony, individually we’re not much, but together we have a brain.”

Whereas conventional wisdom views individual specialization as the antithesis of teamwork, great managers see it as the founding principle. If individual positioning is so important, then at the heart of a great team, there must be an “I.” There must be lots of strong, distinct I’s. There must be individuals who know themselves well enough to pick the right roles and to feel comfortable in them most of the time. If one individual joins the team with little understanding of his own strengths and weaknesses, then he will drag the entire team down with his poor performance and his vague yearnings to switch roles. Self-aware individuals — strong I’s — are the building blocks of great teams.

Each rung is a competition, and since there are fewer rungs than there are employees, each competition generates many more losers than winners. Great managers have a better idea. Why not resolve the conflict by making prestige more available? Why not carve out alternative career paths by conveying meaningful prestige on every role performed at excellence? Why not create heroes in every role?

Dr. No was respected and admired. He was honorable, courageous and detail oriented. And the whole company knew that every plan was strengthened by exposure to Dr. No’s refining fire. He was a most valuable executive. Then Howard left, and Dr. No was promoted. And quite soon, he lost the admiration of his colleagues. You see, Dr. No’s particular talent was to make small things out of big things. This talent had enabled him to take Howard’s crazy ideas and break them down into manageable projects, each of which could then be analyzed for costs, benefits and risks. But this talent was rendered useless without raw material, without a dreamer to dream up the humongous, outrageous idea. And the dreamer had moved on.

“Then one day, it occurred to me that she should go back to school and become a designer herself. She was very curious about the business, very creative and much preferred to do a job by herself. She played with the idea for a while, and then she acted on it. She enrolled at New York University, got her degree and is now at a large advertising agency as a designer. And very successful. “Janet wasn’t a bad person. She had just picked the wrong career, and having started it, she didn’t want to admit to herself that she had made a mistake. I helped her.” With self-discovery as its energy source, great managers now paint this picture of a healthy career. Guided perhaps by her choice of college major, perhaps by her family, perhaps by necessity, the employee selects her first role and jumps into the fray. In this first role, she is unsure of herself. She is unsure of her ability to perform and unsure of her talents and her nontalents. As she achieves certain levels of performance, she might then move into different roles, or she might simply grow within that first role. Either way, it is now her responsibility to look in the mirror and ask, “Do I thrill to this role? Did I seem to learn this role quickly? Am I good in this role? Does this role bring me strength and satisfaction?” It is her responsibility to listen for the clues that this role plays to her talents.

As she looks in the mirror, she learns. Each step is the chance to discover a little more about her talents and her nontalents. These discoveries guide her next step and her next and her next. Her career is no longer a blind hunt for marketable experiences and a breathless climb upward. It has become an increasingly refined series of choices as she narrows her focus toward that role, or roles, where her strengths — her skills, knowledge and talents — converge and resound. Deep down, most people probably know that self-discovery is important to building a healthy career. The difference lies in the way great managers use self-discovery. First, they give self-discovery a central role, making it an explicit expectation for each employee. Mike

Second, these exemplary managers emphasize that the point of self-discovery is not to fix your nontalents. The point is not to “identify and fill in your skill gaps,” as many human resources departments euphemistically describe it. In the spirit of the insight “You cannot put in what was left out, you can only draw out what was left in,” the point of self-discovery is to learn about yourself so that you can capitalize on who you are. The point is to take control of your career, to make more informed decisions and to gradually select roles that represent an increasingly good fit for your natural talents.

The best managers reject this perspective. They know that in this new career, they can play some significant roles. They can level the playing field. They can be the ones to hold up the mirror. And they can create a safety net.

Second, each session began with a brief review of past performance. The purpose of this was not to evaluate — “You should do less of that. You should fix this.” Rather, the purpose was to help the employee think in detail about her style and to spark a conversation about the talents and nontalents that created this style. After this review, the focus always shifted to the future and how the employee could use her style to be productive. Sometimes, they would work together to identify the employee’s path of least resistance toward her goals. But often, the discussion would revolve around partnership. What talents did the manager bring that could complement the nontalents of the employee?

During Gallup’s 80,000 manager interviews, we asked this question: “You have a talented employee who consistently shows up late for work. What would you say to this employee?” The answers ranged from the authoritarian to the laissez-faire: “I would fire him; we don’t tolerate lateness here.” “I would give him a verbal warning, then a written warning, then fire him.” “I would lock the door to the office and tell him that, from now on, even if you are two seconds late, you won’t be allowed in.” “That’s fine. I don’t care what time they come in as long as they stay late and get their work done.” Each of these responses is defensible. Each has its merits. But these were not the answers of great managers. When told that an employee was consistently showing up late for work, the great managers gave this one reply, which sums up their attitude toward manager-employee relationships: “I would ask why.”

Consider the manager who believes that with enough willpower and determination, virtually all behaviors can be changed. For this manager, every case of poor performance is the employee’s fault. The employee has been warned repeatedly, and still he has not improved his performance. If he had more drive, more spirit or more willingness to learn, he would have changed his behavior as required, and the poor performance would have disappeared. But it hasn’t disappeared. He must not be trying hard enough. It is his fault. This seductive logic puts this manager in a very awkward position. Since she told the employee what to do, and since the employee didn’t do it, then the employee must be weak-willed, stupid, disobedient or disrespectful. How can you have a constructive conversation with someone when beneath the surface politeness, this is what you are compelled to think of him? It’s hard. If you are by nature an emotional manager, you fear you might lose your temper and let your anger show. If you are by nature a caring and supportive manager, you worry that he might see through your soothing words and realize how deeply disappointed you are in him. Whatever your style, a conversation in which you have to mask your true feelings is a stressful conversation, particularly when your feelings are so negative. No wonder so many managers try to avoid it. But great managers don’t have to hide their true feelings. They understand that a person’s talents and nontalents constitute an end...

there is blame here, it is evenly spread. Perhaps the employee should have been more self-aware. Perhaps the manager should have been more perceptive. Perhaps. But this is just hindsight pointing the finger. No employee will ever be completely self-aware. No manager will ever know each of his people perfectly, even if he has selected very carefully for talent. So casting errors are not cause for anger or recrimination. Casting errors are inevitable.

This is the love element of tough love. The most effective managers do genuinely care about each of their people. But they imbue care with a distinct meaning. In their minds, to care means to set the person up for success. They truly want each person to find roles where he has a chance to excel, and they know that this is possible only in roles that play to his talents. By this definition, if the person is struggling, it is actively uncaring to allow him to keep playing a part that doesn’t fit. By this definition, firing the person is a caring act. This definition explains not only why great managers move fast to confront poor performance, but also why they are adept at keeping the relationship intact while doing so.

This sounds authoritarian, even arrogant, but Martin P., the police chief, makes a compelling point: “I believe that, deep down, the poor performer knows he is struggling before you do. Maybe he can’t find the words, or maybe his pride won’t let him say it, but he knows. On some level, he wants your help. And so, subconsciously, he puts himself in situations where his weaknesses are exposed. He is daring you, pushing you to fire him. I call this manager-assisted career suicide. If you suspect that this is happening, the best thing you can do is help put him out of his misery.

It doesn’t always happen this way. Some employees remain bitter to the end. But tough love does provide a way for the manager and the employee to handle this delicate situation with dignity. Tough love keeps everyone whole.

By contrast, it turns out that great teachers say they love being doubted. They cherish those moments. Great teachers instinctively interpret the doubters as students, and they see this doubting as a sign of an active, inquisitive mind. For great teachers, then, doubting means learning. Conversely, average teachers say they don’t like to be doubted. Their first point of reference is their own competence, not the students’ learning. Being doubted means having their competence challenged, and for them, there is nothing worse.

Recent research into adult learning reveals that students stay in school longer and learn more if they are expected to direct and record their progress. Great managers realized this long ago and apply it with their employees.

No manager can make an employee productive. Managers are catalysts. They can speed up the reaction between the talent of the employee and the needs of the customer and the company. They can help the employee find his path of least resistance toward his goals. They can help the employee plan his career. But they cannot do any of this without a major effort from the employee. In the world according to great managers, the employee is the star. The manager is the agent. And, as in the world of performing arts, the agent expects a great deal from his stars.