The Effective Manager

by Mark Horstman

Don't use your O3s to pass down standard information that everyone's getting.

The last 10 minutes of your O3s give you an opportunity, periodically, to talk about the future. You probably will only have time to do so once every 20 sessions, because, as we'll discuss, 30 minutes probably isn't long enough to cover everything that you and your direct want to cover. Discussing big-picture or future plans with your directs two to three times a year is probably about right. The 10/10/10 agenda is a template; you are not required to discuss the big picture or the future every week.

Our guideline is to give that team member time. Remember that every direct brings to the relationship with you, the boss, all of his previous relationships with his previous bosses. If the team member had a boss (or two) who was unethical or abusive, don't be surprised if that team member answers your request for dialogue and a relationship with silence. Don't punish him for not opening up. Don't be rude or demand. Ask for input, and if the direct has none, move on to your portion of the O3. Speak about your 10 to 20 minutes' worth of topics, and perhaps something about the future, and you're done. It's not great, but it's useful for you.

If the pattern continues, we recommend that you ask three times at the start of each One On One something like this: Manager: Whaddaya got? Direct: Nothing. Manager: Well, okay. Understand, this is your O3, and this is your portion of it. This is your 15 minutes. It's for brainstorming, asking for help, questions, discussions, sharing—whatever you want to talk about. Direct: I'm good. Manager: Okay. I just want to make sure you don't have anything. I have some stuff, but you get to go first. Final answer? Direct: Nope. You've tried three times—any more will just be annoying. So now you move on to your agenda items. Once you start realizing (after two to three weeks of silence) that there's a problem, we recommend that you start asking more questions about work status, progress, issues, concerns, and needs.

The fact is, though, that this level of resistance is rare. I've never experienced it; neither have most of my friends and colleagues. But it does happen. Give it time, and your direct will gradually open up, over time.

There are two types of pushback on note taking: managers who prefer to take notes on their laptop, and directs who are worried that the manager's notes are a form of “documentation.”

In order to send out an e-mail letting your team know that you're going to start doing One On Ones, you need to pick times on your calendar from which the team can choose their recurring appointment. Take the number of directs you have, multiply that number by 1.5, and that's the number of choices you need to make available to your team in your e-mail.

Avoid times right before and after staff meetings, or regular meetings with your boss. Don't choose Monday morning, because meetings slow people down, and you don't want to slow them down at the start of the week. Don't choose Friday afternoon, because if your O3 gets stepped on, you won't have time to reschedule. Some managers prefer to have all of their O3s on one day (if they don't have too many). Some managers prefer to spread them out. Our data are inconclusive about which works better—do what works for you.

Don't let your directs choose whatever time works for them.

Don't choose times that work for you without any input.

The reason you need 15 half-hour slots if you have 10 directs is so the last direct who chooses still gets a choice. Don't worry—those five unused slots will come back to you.

Once you've sent the e-mail and set the schedule, set some time apart in your next staff meeting—say, 30 minutes—and walk everyone through what you've learned here. Walk them through the purpose, the agenda, how you're going to take notes, and how they're going to continue indefinitely.

When the average manager gives feedback, the focus is on what happened. The manager thinks about what happened in the past and asks herself how to talk to the direct—about what happened, in the past, about which the manager can do nothing.

They get defensive because managers talk to them about their mistakes—which happened in the past—about which the directs can do nothing. So, they feel trapped.

There are all kinds of reasons why directs defend themselves. Probably first on the list is a lack of trust in you, their boss.

The lack of frequent performance communications increases directs' defensiveness as well.

If you don't point out mistakes frequently, your directs assume that, when you do choose to talk to them, they think it's because they may be “in trouble.” Their defensiveness, then, should not be surprising.

The way to reduce these problems down to a manageable minimum is to ask yourself, “What is the purpose of this performance communication that I'm delivering? The purpose of performance communications (and therefore feedback) is to encourage effective future behavior.

Step 1: Ask. Step 2: State the Behavior. Step 3: State the Impact of the Behavior. Step 4: Encourage Effective Future Behavior.

The reason you should ask for permission is that the only person who can engage in the behavior is the team member to whom you're talking.

We have found that, in more than three-fourths of situations (self-reported by managers), in which directs say no to the question, they seek the manager out within a few hours to find out what the feedback would have been. I've been told by many directs that their curiosity got the better of them. What better way to give feedback to a direct than when they come ask for it?

Asking directs for permission to give them feedback significantly increases their appreciation for your giving them the feedback and also the likelihood of their effective future behavior.

Meaning is determined 7 percent based on the words we use, 38 percent by tonal differences, and 55 percent by nonverbal cues (facial expressions and body language).

Step 2 of the model always begins with the words, When you. By starting your sentence with these words, you encourage yourself to focus on the direct's behavior.

Directs don't want managers to sugarcoat negative feedback. They don't want them to work their way toward saying something. They don't want chit-chat. More words do not soften the blow. They just want managers to say what needs to be said.

Our guidance is to look for small impacts that happen every day. It's easier to give feedback on them, and all those small changes will add up.

When we are giving negative feedback, we are asking the direct to behave differently. We're not punishing the past mistake, because we've already forgiven it. Remember that our focus is on the future, not the past.

Whenever possible, it's best for managers to give feedback immediately after they see, hear, or notice the behavior. If you have a chance to give feedback right after one of your directs does something you either want to encourage (positive feedback) or change (negative feedback), and you can do so without others overhearing, do so.

The point of immediacy is not to wait. The sooner your directs get feedback about what they do, good or bad, the more quickly they can implement that feedback. If managers can give feedback immediately, it works better.

But “immediately” isn't necessary. If you can't give someone feedback in a meeting because you can't do it without others overhearing, you can absolutely give it an hour or two later, when you and they have a moment. Another way to think about the “when” of feedback is “as soon as is practicable”—but that's not as easy to say as “immediately.”

Giving immediate feedback is a great but almost unattainable goal. The real goal for timing your feedback is as soon as you can.

If you're wondering how to define how long “soon” lasts at the outside, it's about a week. In other words, don't give feedback that's more than a week old. Why? The reason is that your ability to remember precisely by then has faded enough so that you may not get it right, and accuracy matters when you are giving feedback.

If you're angry, don't give feedback. Period.

If your purpose is to remind your directs of their mistakes, again, that is not in alignment with the purpose of giving feedback. If you're giving feedback, then your purpose is to encourage effective future behavior. Yes, you have to mention the past, but that's not your purpose. You're not trying to point out the mistake.

The analogy works this way: when your direct gets defensive, you needn't do anything at all about it, because you have already fired a shot across their bow. They likely know they're in the wrong, and they know you're aware of what they did. If it continues, you'll likely be back. Enough said.

So, if your stuck-in-the-past direct won't allow you to achieve your original purpose, don't honor the direct's request that you join her in the past. It was your conversation to begin with. If you're not going to be able to achieve your purpose, don't make it worse by arguing about something you can't change.

Standard feedback is about small behaviors. Systemic feedback addresses the moral hazard of a direct committing to new behavior but then failing to follow through. We can tolerate directs who make mistakes. We cannot tolerate directs who repeatedly make commitments they don't keep.

You should use systemic feedback when you have already given six instances of standard feedback in a period of time that indicates a pattern, and the direct has not been engaging in the behavior they've committed to.

Systemic feedback is different from standard feedback because the behavior about which we're giving feedback is the failure to meet commitments (as opposed to the original behavior) that the direct agreed to in step 4 of the standard model when the direct said yes.

Systemic feedback has two related dangers that we have to be cautious of. We Must Be Faithful to the Feedback Model's Step 4. If we don't use the standard feedback model appropriately, we can't use the systemic feedback model. We have to have repeated commitments from our direct, which come out of step 4 (“Can you work on that?), to be able to address the direct's failure to keep the commitment.

Implied Sanctions Must Be Delivered. Because the systemic feedback is the last step in feedback, it's possible that some managers will throw up their hands in frustration at the direct's lack of change in behavior. I don't think that will be effective, but I understand the frustration.

Starting to deliver feedback follows naturally after you've rolled out One On Ones.

Now that you've decided to begin adding feedback to your Manager Tools and you've been developing better relationships with your directs, you've got to announce your intended change to your team all at once. Feedback is an individual behavior, but announcing it to the team says that everyone is going to treated similarly.

Tell them when you give them feedback, you're focused on the future.

Positive feedback is a much more powerful tool than negative feedback. Don't wait your entire career to finally realize that.

If a direct is capable of more/better/higher performance, the manager is obligated to work hard to make it happen.

We offer an important caveat here about vocabulary: coaching, in different parts of the professional world, has two different meanings. In some cases, it just means a manager pointing out mistakes and making suggestions—very episodic, very ad hoc. Nothing systemic, nothing planned. (And by the way: it's always negative.)

There's also a large number of organizations where coaching is really one name given to the “Performance Improvement Plan” that a failing employee is put on. The employee is not put on the plan to succeed but, rather, to allow the organization to gather objective data about the employee's failure to perform to give them enough data to terminate employment without legal risk.

Coaching is most effective when it is collaborative.

We have to define what the measure of success is for the behavior we're expecting to change.