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the fear your role power engenders creates an initial negative response to new managerial behaviors.
The three most common forms of pushback against O3s are the following: It's micromanaging. I don't have time. We talk all the time
Never tolerate from your directs what you would not do to your boss.
a direct who wishes for virtually no managerial oversight is a liability risk.
The direct who believes that a 30-minute meeting once a week is burdensome and means that you are overbearing is telling you either that he is afraid of oversight, which legally is scary, or that he is above it, which is a level of arrogance that could tear apart your team.
Management, reasonably practiced, in virtually every organization, provides necessary guidance, controls, and incentives far below a level that is intrusive or detrimental.
Micromanagement is the systemic and routine application of an intrusive relationship such that the manager assigns a task, explains what to do, how to do it, insists on total process compliance, and then observes the work in real time, correcting the work as it is being done, and, in the event of divergence from standards, taking OVER the work and completing it himself.
A demanding boss is not a micromanager. Asking for reports is not micromanaging. Expecting updates is not micromanaging. Asking for one meeting a week is not micromanaging someone. Spending time communicating about tasks, deliverables, deadlines, successes, failures, growth opportunities, and, yes, even family—is not micromanaging in any way.
What manager who considers herself effective would argue that she does not do these things: talk about performance, answer questions, provide feedback, assign work, praise, provide coaching, talk about relationships, discuss development, develop relationships, inquire about the status of assigned tasks, expect status reporting, pay attention to work-family balance, plan, check the work of others, and reward.
Role power is heightened by stronger relationships with one's team.
That's why, when we announce that we're going to start doing One On Ones, we announce that they won't start for three weeks. Part of that is to allow for the scheduling to take place.
But the main reason for the three-week lag time is that people who have full calendars the week of the announcement rarely will have that same fullness three weeks from now.
If it helps, another approach you can take to combat the “busy” pushback is that, if your directs are all so busy that they don't have time for anything more, they better get their priorities straight. They may well be so busy that they're not making time for the truly critical issues and opportunities. They need to be aligned, and what better way than a regular check-in?
Before trying to get more of everything done, get the most important things done first.
Work on the right things first. Then become more efficient at doing those right things, and you'll have more time for either more right things or some less important things.
When you're working in “the now,” and someone asks for half an hour of your time, apoplexy might be a reasonable response. You never feel like you have half an hour when you're up against the deadlines of “the now.” Yet, if I asked you for 30 minutes of your time next month, you'd surely be able to make that work.
There are three forms of power or influence in organizations. Role power, that which the organization grants you to compel others to act for the organization; relationship power, your own ability to change behaviors of others because of their knowledge of, and trust in, you; and expertise power, others' perception of your technical, industrial, or topical knowledge that causes them to follow your guidance.
Just because we know that relationship power is the ultimate lever, this doesn't mean that role power doesn't exist. If we use it rarely, when we do use it, we will be respected. Role power tends to exist in inverse proportion to how often you use it.
The agenda is simple: first, 10 minutes for your direct to speak, then 10 minutes for you to speak, and then 10 minutes to talk about the future.
If it's important to my team member, it's important to me. That's how you build relationships.
Trust your directs to choose to talk about what's important to them.
While 74 percent of directs say that what they most want to talk about is work, 89 percent of managers say they want to talk about work.
If you want more guidance about work and personal topics in One On Ones, There's a Cast for That™.
Don't use your O3s to pass down standard information that everyone's getting.
The 10/10/10 agenda is a template; you are not required to discuss the big picture or the future every week.
The average direct talks for 21 minutes. It would follow that we would then say that managers get the final nine minutes, but that's not exactly true, because managers report that they often run over the scheduled time allotted for the meeting, in order to cover their list of items.
65 percent of their directs “talk about the right amount,” 30 percent “talk too much,” and only 5 percent “talk too little.”
The agenda of a meeting always serves the purpose of the meeting, not the other way around. The agenda is there to facilitate the purpose. If the agenda is getting in the way of the purpose, you jettison the agenda to get to the purpose.
Remember that every direct brings to the relationship with you, the boss, all of his previous relationships with his previous bosses.
Our data show that you can get roughly 80 percent of the value from a phone O3 that you get from a face-to-face O3.
Primary Focus on the Team Member Regularly Scheduled Never Missed 30 Minutes (and the 10/10/10 rule) Take Notes
If you really believe in the relationship value of One On Ones, you will make the time to call your directs, just like when you are going to a meeting in a conference room. Don't make your directs come and find you.
The most important thing you'll be evaluating from your distant directs is their work product. What form does work product most often take in these situations? Documents.
We've found that asking for key documents in advance speeds up the One On One.
Ideally, rather than asking for documents in advance, you've created some sort of e-storage solution for your directs' work product.
Know where your directs' work product documents are, and have them available to you both when doing a One On One.
This means you have to focus. We have several suggestions for how to do this. Start with Your Back Turned. Too many managers look out over where their directs sit when they are on the phone. Don't do this. Turn your back on the world. Close your door. Don't look around. Ignore Interruptions. No one is ever interrupted “by someone else.” Every interruption is caused by the person being interrupted, when that person stops what she's doing. When someone approaches, turn your back. If the person speaks to you, smile and point to the phone. If the person is standing there, waiting for you to get
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You Cannot Be Friends with Your Directs
Further, even if we ignore the friendship aspect for a moment, the appearance of friendship (whose moral obligations are always assumed) is a significant detractor to one's ability to lead and manage others.
Friendship implies a social obligation to someone else.
Friendships also cause the majority of us to enter into an implicit understanding regarding the secrecy of our friends' communications with us. One of the hallmarks of friendship is, in fact, an unstated understanding that the relationship confers the ability to share some things that normally would be closely held, or withheld from others. This “friendship confidentiality” can be invoked at any time, and, what's more, invoked retroactively: “Hey, by the way, what I just said, you won't share that, right?”
With both of these ideas—social obligation and implied secrecy—friendships run afoul of a manager's professional obligations. A manager cannot expect to be treated as a professional if she at times accepts the different set of moral obligations that friendship also implies. If you're a manager, a part of you knows this. It's not a joy to talk about, but we can't just ignore the friction between our various sets of obligations.
your directs don't think of you as a nice person. Why? Because they think of you as the boss.
Let's take this idea to its logical extension. Not only do your directs see you first as their boss, but also everyone else sees you as your directs' boss, not as your directs' friend. When your behaviors aren't easily understood as normal manager behaviors, others in the firm will wonder why you're not effective or not reasonable. They will assume that, regardless of any previous relationship, your decisions will be based on managerial factors, not friendship. If they ever find out otherwise, you will not be taken seriously for much longer.
You Can Be Friendly with Your Directs Hopefully, this is the gigantic loophole so many managers want it to be. You cannot be friends with your directs, but yes you can be friendly with them. You might think that the two mean the same thing, but there is a clear difference. The difference lies in what we've already talked about. Being friendly with your directs is simply a set of behaviors. Smiling, asking about their free time and families, being polite, starting conversations with small talk, sharing about your own life, encouraging them to join you for lunch, accepting lunch invitations, and
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Now, you might say, “Wait, these are the things friends do,” and you would be right. But, to be a friend, as opposed to simply engaging in friendly behavior, one also accepts the obligation that “being a friend” means, as opposed to just behaving in a friendly way. This is the obligation that we addressed earlier. It is the obligation of friendship, not the friendly behaviors, that is the problem with managers being friends with their directs. Friendly, yes; friends, no.
You can't be friends with ANY of your directs. You CAN behave in a friendly way to all of your directs. You can't behave in a friendly way to some of your directs—even if they're not friends—without behaving similarly with all of your other directs.
The biggest problem with having differing levels of friendship—from actual friends to friendly behaviors to no special relationship at all—is the perception effect. Even if you genuinely aren't friends with a direct, if you then behave in a friendly way toward her while not behaving similarly with others, this will be seen as a form of friendship and will be a cause for concern. Others will question your motivations and decisions. Your credibility will suffer. In other words, you can't use the “friendly behavior” distinction to attempt to either hide a friendship with a direct or to
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If drinking is only a friendly behavior, then yes, you can imbibe with your directs. But remember: you can't show favoritism. If you're drinking with a smaller subset of your team regularly, you're either admitting they're your friends, or, if you wish to claim it's only friendly behavior, then the subset makes it friendly behavior that is unevenly applied. Thus, favoritism.
You Cannot Do or Say Stupid or Drunk Things with Your Directs
