The Effective Manager

by Mark Horstman

“The plural of anecdote is not data.”

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?”

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

The four critical behaviors that an effective manager engages in to produce results and retain team members are the following: Get to Know Your People. Communicate about Performance. Ask for More. Push Work Down.

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.

what makes you think you can get the last full measure of devotion to work out of someone when you don't know the names of the people who are the most precious to them in the world?

Let me share a realization I've come to over the years after working with hundreds of thousands of managers. Your directs don't see you as a nice person. I'm not saying you're not a nice person—I believe you are, and your directs probably believe so, too. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Think of stress, however, as occurring on a continuum (it does). Below the “stressed out” level of distress is the useful level of stress called eustress. It's pronounced “you-stress,” and that eu- prefix is like the prefixes on euphoria, euphony, and eudaimonia. 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.

Asking for more accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

Pushing work down accounts for roughly 15 percent of the total value created by engaging in the four critical behaviors.

The newer managers have to be better because, as organizations grow, growth becomes more difficult, so the same behaviors in a more difficult situation begets less performance just when more is needed.

Here's the rank ordering of results and retention improvements by periodicity: Weekly—Biggest improvement in both results and retention Biweekly—Slightly less than half the improvement seen by weekly O3s No One On Ones—Slight improvement in results and retention Monthly—Slight decrease in results and retention

But here's what our research has shown: moving an already scheduled One On One to a different time because of a conflict has no statistically significant effect on the manager's results and retention improvements. Managers who schedule and then move their O3s frequently achieve similar improvements in results and retention as managers whose schedules are more fixed and rarely move their O3s.

Regarding “compliance” (stated as a percentage, the number of O3s that you conduct versus how many were scheduled), our data show that 85 percent compliance appears to be the demarcation between getting the results you want and something less.

Take it from an engineer: like it or not, your relationship with your directs is a force multiplier. The more you know about all of your directs—not just your top performers—the more they will trust you, and the better you will be at getting the most out of each one of them.

You should not hold One On Ones with anyone other than your direct reports. This means that you don't do One On Ones with people who report to your directs. (A caveat: you can do peer One On Ones with, say, other managers who report to your boss and with whom you need to maintain a strong relationship.)

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.

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.

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.

A typical O3 direct's portion includes updates about ongoing work, questions about problems they're having, project status reports, requests for assistance with budgets or communications, requests for guidance about next steps or about approaching a problem, verification of rumors they've heard, clarification of what you want or how you want something done, notifications of tasks they've finished, follow-up on pending actions, reminders of information or materials they need from you, and so on.

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.

As a general rule, effective managers don't allow directs to keep large amounts of work product documents in storage locations that the manager can't get at without the direct's involvement.

Let's set up a simple series of tests for the manager-direct relationship. 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.

If, when you observe other managers, they look like they get it, you're likely mistaken. They're as untrained as you are, for the most part. If they seem confident of their managerial skills, they're probably not. They hope, much like you do, that their lack of skills and knowledge won't be discovered.

The average manager hasn't been trained, tutored, mentored, taught, or coached with anything approaching professional development of the skills necessary for becoming a successful manager.

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.

You can use the word feedback or another word, but you must first ask the direct, every time, whether it's positive feedback that you will be giving or negative feedback. The question might be something like this: “Can I give you some feedback?” “Can I make an observation?” “Can I share something with you?” “Can I have a word with you?”

It's an important managerial rule to never ask a question of your directs if you don't intend to honor their answer.

We don't ask only when we're going to give negative feedback. We ask every time. If we only asked when we were going to give negative feedback, our directs would soon understand that this was a signal and would know what was coming next. For this reason, we also ask the same question every time.

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.

Here are some examples: “Could you change that?” “Can you do that differently?” “What can you do differently?” “How could that be better?”

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

If you're wondering how to define how long “soon” lasts at the outside, it's about a week.

Failure to meet commitments is a systemic failure that no organization can long tolerate among its members.

When I'm giving this feedback week to week, I'm not changing the tone or delivery in any way. We don't escalate, or use a tone that suggests that “things are getting worse.” We don't hint at consequences. Rest assured, our directs know that continued failure to change a behavior that we've asked to change is a problem.

Here is the fundamental difference. 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.

After 12 weeks of having One On Ones, you can start the process of delivering your performance communications in the Manager Tools Feedback Model.

We've got a free feedback document on our website that gives you everything you need. Hand it out to your directs. It will make it much easier for them to receive feedback if they know what's coming and why it's coming.

Here's one way to share with your directs why you're thinking of using this tool. “I've got an obligation to help you be at your very best every day. If you're like me, you're not always sure that your good work is being recognized or that it's what the boss wants. And you're not sure if you're always doing it exactly right or if there is a better way to do it. The feedback model is just a way for us to talk about what you're doing and what the results are.”

Most managers fail to realize how much they see their job as “correcting mistakes.” If you believe you should be “vigilant” against “mistakes,” two things will happen gradually: you'll start seeing all the mistakes, and you'll stop seeing all the good behaviors.

Manager Tools defines coaching as a systemic effort to improve the performance of a direct in a specific skill area. It's neither episodic nor inherently negative.

Manager Tools uses a goal structure called DBQ: Deadline, Behavior, Quality.

Also, because we remember that coaching is a more powerful tool than feedback, we usually don't set deadlines of less than four months away.

Rather than making the perfect the enemy of the good, we're going to take some steps to help Derek. If they don't work perfectly, we don't care, as long as Derek makes progress that he wouldn't have made had we not tried.

Following 12 weeks of One On Ones, and eight weeks of only positive feedback, followed by eight weeks of both positive and negative feedback, it's time to roll out coaching slowly. Set aside time in your weekly staff meeting, and walk through the four-step Manager Tools Coaching Model. If you have time, give your directs examples of Deadline, Behavior, Quality (DBQ) goals and of how effective tasks are actually deliverables with short deadlines.