The Effective Manager

by Mark Horstman

It's about getting the most out of your direct reports,

I got promoted, and they didn't tell me anything about what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to do it. They just gave me a team and wished me luck.

Do you understand? An audience doesn't react to a speaker's nervousness. They react to the behaviors that they see and hear that they ascribe to nerves. If Paul is nervous but doesn't behave as if he is nervous, will his audience notice? Of course not. They'll think he's confident.

Success at work is about what you do—you are your behaviors. Almost nothing else matters.

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”

“How do you measure what a good manager is, or does?”

Your First Responsibility as a Manager Is to Achieve Results

Your first responsibility is NOT to your team of directs. It's NOT to your people. You should NOT worry about them first. Your first responsibility is to deliver whatever results your organization expects from you.

About the only way to really feel good about what your responsibilities are is to have quantified goals, in numbers and percentages: “Higher than 92 percent call quality each week”; “Achieve 1.6 MM in sales”; “Maintain gross margins above 38 percent”; “Reduce shipping losses by 2.7 percent cumulatively year over year.”

The problem with not having clearly delineated responsibilities is that you can't make intelligent choices about where to focus. You begin to feel that “everything is important.” You begin to “try to get everything done.” Of course, you can't, and you probably know that already, because you're working long hours and never get everything done.

If you can't list your goals almost off the top of your head, make a note somewhere to go to your boss in the near future. Ask her: “What results do you expect of me?” “What are the measures you're going to compare me against?” “What are the objective standards?” “What subjective things do you look at to round out your evaluation of me?”

Okay, so results come first. Managers who produce great results have more successful careers than those who produce average results.

There are managers who put results so far ahead of everything else that they justify all sorts of behaviors to achieve those results.

When the ends justify the means for managers, bad things happen to the workers who report to them.

A focus only on results far too often leads to abuse of workers.

Your Second Responsibility as a Manager Is to Retain Your People

The Definition of an Effective Manager Is One Who Gets Results and Keeps Her People

How well did this manager do her job, as shown in her results? Did she retain her people?

the single most important (and efficient) thing that you can do as a manager to improve your performance and increase retention is to spend time getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of your direct reports. Managers who know how to get the most out of each individual member of the team achieve noticeably better results than managers who don't.

Despite the fact that your primary responsibility is getting results, the most important thing you can do isn't strategizing, task assignment, resource planning, or priority analysis. It's getting to know the people who have the skills and who are going to get the work done.

Our data over the years suggest that, generally, a manager who knows his or her team members one standard deviation better than the average manager produces results that are two standard deviations better than the average manager's results.

Every person on the earth expects and deserves to be treated as an individual. Sadly, what most of us as managers do (I know I did early in my career) is manage others the way we would like to be managed.

You do to your directs what would make sense if you were one of those directs.

People and their behaviors are what deliver results to your organization. (Not systems, not processes, not computers, not machines.) Results are your primary responsibility.

the biggest leverage of all: a trusting relationship with those whom you manage.

But that's not how your directs see you. They see you as their boss. It's a hard truth, but one worth remembering. Because of the power of your role, your directs don't see you the way you see yourself.

When you control others' addiction to food, clothing, and shelter, they're going to see you through a different lens than you see yourself.

If you doubt this, if you think that you're different—that you're loved and not feared at all by your team—think of it this way: do you tell your boss everything? Of course you don't.

Generally, the more a team trusts its manager, the better the results will be, and the better the retention as well.

When I trust my boss, I spend less time worrying about what her intentions are and whether I have to cover my tail on all of my work. I don't have to second-guess the “why” of a task or the delegation of it, or ask my colleagues for political support if I decide to push back on something. There's more time for results.

When we give managers an organizational chart showing the managers and their directs and we say, “Draw your team,” the managers generally circle themselves and the team as a whole. But when we give that same instruction to the directs on that team, the directs circle themselves and their peers—and leave the manager out.

the binding and distinctive element of teams that outperform others is the amount of trust that they build and engender among their members.

The quality of our communications is judged by whether or not what we talk about is of interest or benefit to them.

If you're going to create trust and trusting relationships with your directs, then, you're going to have to talk to them frequently about things that are important to them.

Getting to know your directs accounts for 40 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

the most important thing you can do as a manager is to develop a trusting relationship with the people on your team. If you do, everything else is easier. If you don't, everything else is harder, and your results will be attenuated.

Would your performance improve if you heard more often from your boss about how you were doing? Most professionals, when we ask them that question, give a resounding yes.

If you want more performance communications from YOUR boss, you know your directs want the same thing from you.

“Well, my boss doesn't do what *I* want *her* to do, but *my* people—they LOVE me.”

At times, play at the highest level approaches beauty.

One baseball player once said that he thought they turned 5,000 double plays every spring—5,000!—when, in a normal season, turning 150 would be an outstanding accomplishment! Why that amount of practice? They know that creating and using the feedback that they receive will make them better, when it matters.

When we talk to high-performing directs who rate their boss as outstanding, performance communications come up over and over again as a core reason. “He tells me how I'm doing.” “When I do well, he says so.” “When I mess up, he quickly tells me, and we move on.” “I never need to worry about where I stand—she tells me.”

If you want high performance, you're going to have to talk about it with your directs. It matters more than anything else, other than your relationship with them.

Performance communication accounts for 30 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

This means that, if you build a great relationship with each of your directs and talk with them about performance regularly, you're 70 percent of the way ...

Our data show that, if you want great results and retention, you have to be willing to constantly raise the bar on performance. It's not enough, based on what we see, to simply be a caretaker. It's not enough to accept from your directs what their “comfort zone” is. It's not enough to let your directs “stay where they are.”

It's the manager's job to figure out what the external change means for her group and to direct the performance of her group in ways that satisfy the needs of the organization.

You've probably heard the phrase, “I'm stressed out.” You've probably even said it yourself. Well, this may surprise you: as managers, we're supposed to stress out our directs. Yes, you read that correctly. You're supposed to create stress for your directs.

How is this possible? Well, what most people don't know about stress is that there are two kinds. There's distress: that's the kind you mean when you're feeling “stressed out.” It's a level of stress that impedes or hinders your performance. You're overwhelmed, you can't think straight, and you feel fearful, uncreative—frozen, even.

Eustress is the stress you feel that helps you get ready, get excited, and “get up” for the big game. It's that tingly feeling of anticipation, eagerness, and a sense of fire and determination that you feel when your team huddles and shouts, “Team!” or, “Beat Navy!” before a game.