Too many managers are spending too much time trying to change people. They seem to believe that if they train people, tell them what to do or threaten them with the sack, then they can get them to change.
The Motivational Manager concentrates on developing the strengths of his team members – not trying to correct their weaknesses.
Sometimes you have to manage around a weakness (we’ll look at that later) but you can’t make people what they’re not.
I described earlier how I had taken some golf lessons. A friend and I spent some hours with a professional golfer and coach at a local country club. This was really useful to me and I did get better. However, my friend Robin hadn’t a clue. No matter what the pro told him to do, how to change his stance and his grip, he could hardly hit the ball. If you’d given Robin a hundred lessons and threatened him with a gun, I doubt if he’d ever have com- pleted a round of golf in less than two days. Robin is a successful lawyer and makes a lot of money. However, a golfer he is not!
The Motivational Manager concentrates on developing the strengths of his team members –
not trying to correct their weaknesses.
So if you have a sales person on your team who isn’t bringing in the sales or a production engineer who isn’t making his quota then you have to make a decision (back to the thinking part). Is this person not producing because they don’t have the ability, because they need more training, or because there’s another reason?
We’re going to look at coaching and other reasons for non- performance in Chapter 5 but for the moment it’s important to understand that the individual may not be able to do the job.
They may tell you they can do the job because they’re unwilling to accept defeat. However, I’ve known people in sales jobs who shouldn’t be in sales and doctors, plumbers, lawyers and engi- neers who were also in the wrong job.
What you need to do is get people who can’tdo the job into a job that they cando or get them out of your team.
I joined three companies as a manager and in each case I inherited team members who didn’t have what it takes to do the job. I’d usu- ally find three categories of people in the teams. The first group were the ‘good guys’, the ones I knew could do the job and would- n’t give me any hassle. The second group consisted of people who needed a bit of looking after, watching closely and definitely some coaching. The third group were the ones who didn’t have either the skills or the characteristics to do the job and no amount of training, or anything I could do, would change that. I would often find that these people, due to their lack of success, weren’t exactly happy in the job anyway and were sometimes only too pleased to be transferred to another position.
I hear you saying, ‘Easier said than done Alan’ and you’re right.
But the Motivational Manager needs to address these issues for the good of the team and the business. It often takes co-opera- tion from your manager so we’ll look at that in Chapter 5.
Strengths not weaknesses
I keep talking about Chapter 5 and that’s where we’ll look at how to give feedback. We’ll be looking at how to give your team
members (and your manager) feedback on their strengths and also on their weaknesses. However, these will only be weak- nesses that we know the individual can do something about. It’s a waste of your time and effort trying to sort weaknesses that can’t be sorted. Some people just can’t build relationships with cus- tomers, others can’t work as fast as you need them to and others can’t write a report to save their life.
Your most productive time as a man- ager will be spent giving feedback on strengths and how to develop these even further.
Many managers spend the majority of their time with team mem- bers trying to resolve weaknesses. They then don’t have the time or sometimes the capability to give feedback on strengths. The Motivational Manager concentrates on strengths not weaknesses.
One company where I worked as a regional sales manager had very strict procedures on how a field sales person should conduct themselves.
They had to present the sale to a customer in a particular structured way. They had to dress in a certain way and do their paperwork in a certain way. Their car had to be clean and their product samples had to be laid out in the boot of their car in the ‘company’ way.
My boss, the General Sales Manager, was a stickler for these rules and regulations. However, needless to say, certain sales people in my team didn’t always do their paperwork on time or have their car laid out in the required way. They did, however, bring in the sales and as their manager that was the outcome I needed from them. Therefore, I was extremely careful how I gave them feedback on their per- formance. I knew that I’d ultimately be judged by my manager on the sales performance of my team, so I concentrated on reinforcing their skills in that area. I didn’t ignore untidy paperwork or samples that weren’t laid out properly but I definitely kept any comments to the absolute minimum. I’ve witnessed a salesman, in another team, handing a big order to his manager and then being reprimanded for having an untidy car boot. If that’s the approach you take, then what you end up with is tidy car boots and fewer sales.
The Motivational Manager concentrates on strengths not
weaknesses.
Your most productive time as a manager will be spent giving feedback on strengths and how to
develop these even further.
Focus on the outcomes
As a manager you need to be very clear about what your outcomes are. Whether you call them goals, objectives or targets, these are the factors that you’re ultimately judged on. You’ll find them in your job description or contract and I’m sure your manager will concentrate on them at your next performance review. It’s what you’re paid to do.
Many managers allow themselves to be distracted and diverted from their outcomes. They get involved in all sorts of situations that take their ‘eye off the ball’.
I regularly run a workshop for managers called Managing Your Priorities. At the start of the workshop I ask the managers to draw a map on a large sheet of flip-chart paper of all the things they do in their job. They almost inevitably fill that page with all sorts of tasks and activities. More often than not they surprise themselves with what’s on the page. I then ask them to identify and mark with a large cross their real priorities, and the outcomes that they’re ultimately judged on. Out of all the tasks and activities on the page they usually cross only five or six priorities and sometimes fewer.
(You might want to try this exercise yourself sometime.)
What we do find, however, is that the priorities they identify are not allocated the time they deserve on a day-to-day basis. The managers will often blame their senior manager for many of the tasks that divert them from their priorities, which is perfectly fair.
However, there are many tasks managers take on because:
1. They don’t like to say ‘no’.
2. They don’t trust anyone else to do them.
3. They just ‘like’ to do the tasks themselves.
I then spend time in the workshop showing managers how to communicate with their senior manager and their other col- leagues in order to minimise the number of tasks that don’t contribute to their outcomes. It’s back again to who runs your mind; is it you or is it somebody else?
Many managers fall into the trap of believing that their manager will understand why they haven’t hit their target or quota. They seem to think that because the senior manager has handed out all sorts of other tasks, then they’ll accept your failure to achieve your target. Well let me tell you now – they won’t!
Motivational Managers keep focused on outcomes and don’t allow anyone or anything to divert them without good reason.
Keep the team focused on outcomes
It’s also important to focus on outcomes as far as your team is concerned. Whatever tasks your manager is putting on you, don’t allow yourself to do the same to your team. Sometimes your team members will be only too happy to do other little jobs and tasks that you ask them to do. I’ve had sales people say, ‘Oh, I’ll deliver that to the customer, it’s on my way.’ Customer service people will say, ‘I’ll go and talk to distribution or finance depart- ment about that.’ You have to keep asking yourself the question
‘Is what they’re doing helping me to achieve my outcomes?’ If the answer is ‘no’, don’t let them do it.
Make it clear to your team what the outcomes are and don’t con- cern yourself too much about how they get there. Now that doesn’t mean that you encourage a salesman to get a sale at any cost, or a chef to use inferior ingredients. And you obviously don’t want a maintenance engineer cutting corners that could jeopardise safety.
However, it does mean using your thinking part again and listening to your inbuilt programs. Your people may not do a job the way you would do it but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.
I’ve often listened to a sales person speaking to a customer and found myself thinking, ‘That’s not the way I’d do it.’ The tempta- tion is to jump into the conversation or speak to the sales person afterwards. However, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut, because many times the sales person closed the business, the cus- tomer was happy and it probably wasbetter than I would do it.
Motivational Managers keep focused on outcomes and don’t
allow anyone or anything to divert them without good reason.
I checked into a hotel recently and as I signed the paperwork the bubbly receptionist complimented me on my cologne. She asked what kind it was so that she might buy some for her boyfriend. Now I know this hotel chain and this isn’t part of the welcoming speech. I also know that some managers would discourage this level of famil- iarity between staff and customers. But I’ll tell you something as a customer – I loved it, and she certainly brightened my day! Her response was far better than some of the stuffy robotic greetings you get from receptionists at the major hotel chains.
This receptionist had made me a happy customer and if I owned this hotel that’s an outcome I would want.
Southwest Airlines in the USA has consistently won awards for the fewest complaints, best baggage handling and best on-time performance. However, everything at Southwest is focused on fun. Obviously safety is important and all employees follow FAA regulations. But the whole purpose of the company is to have fun.
I’ve flown with airlines who continually tell me that their focus is my safety. I don’t really want to know that; I take it as a given.
Stop telling me how safe I am, you’re scaring me – I want fun!
Southwest issue guidelines to flight attendants in their training courses. They hand out joke books and give them ideas and tools for having fun. They then leave it up to the individual flight attendant to create ‘fun’ for the customer. As they say, ‘We don’t want clones.’
The successful manager defines the outcomes to the team members and then lets each person find their way of getting there. That doesn’t mean you walk away nor have no idea
what’s going on. As I said earlier, you should be constantly getting out there with the team, watching and listening and supporting what they’re doing.
In Chapter 1 I said that the two characteristics of Motivational Managers were:
1. They get the job done.
2. They do it in the easiest and least stressful way.
The successful manager defines the outcomes to the team mem- bers and then lets each person find their way of getting there.
I’m just reminding you of that, because to try to control your team’s activities and get them to do things the way you want them done is extremely stressful. It can also mean that you demotivate the team and then it will be much harder to achieve your outcomes.
Trust your team
I just want to say a bit more about trusting and having faith in your people; it’s so important that I’ve devoted Chapter 6 to it.
However, this chapter is devoted to you and your characteristics and it’s very important to get the ‘trust’ program into your brain.
The old-style managers that I described in Chapter 1, were pro- grammed to believe that they couldn’t trust their people. That doesn’t mean they thought they were dishonest, just that they needed to constantly supervise their people to ensure they did the job properly. Sadly, many managers still see it that way today.
The Motivational Manager thinks the opposite: he or she believes and trusts their people to do the job and let’s them get on with it. If you’ve got the old program, as I once did, then be prepared to change it. Because if your team members believe that you trust them to do the job, then it will have a huge positive effect on morale and on you achieving your outcomes.
This book is all about how to become a Motivational Manager.
However, as you’ve probably realised,youdon’t motivate your team – youcreate the environment in which they motivate themselves.
Trusting your people to do their job goes a long way towards creating that environment.
However, you’ve firstly got to get the right people in your team and that’s what we’re going to look at next.
Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.
Warren G. Bennis (1925–, American psychologist, management educator and consultant) You don’t motivate your team –
youcreate the environment in which they motivate themselves.