Nobody does it better

We talked last week about managers who don’t listen to the people in their teams (I do hope you were paying attention) and this week we look at the second of the two biggest mistakes that managers make. It’s almost an offshoot of not listening - micromanaging: telling people how to do things and then hounding them until it’s done.

It’s understandable that a lot of managers make this mistake. I’ve written before about how managers often find themselves in charge of a team not because they are good at managing but because they are good at something else. Someone displays an aptitude in their job, they’re marked out for progression and management, often, is the only way of progressing. So a very good engineer, say, finds herself in charge of a team of engineers because that’s the only way she can climb the corporate ladder.

But good engineers - or anything else - don’t necessarily make good managers and, lacking confidence in their new role, managers often fall back onto what they know. They start telling other people how to do their jobs or criticizing the job team members are doing because it’s not done in the way the manager would have done it.

If you suspect this might be you, relax; it happens a lot. But remember, each time you do it you’re making it harder for your team members to engage with their work and you’re making your - and their - life harder. There’s a difference between advising someone who legitimately wants or needs your help and nitpicking, so the next time you delegate work, focus on the desired result and not the method. Explain what you want, not how you want it done. If there are particular rules that they must follow, if there are particular consequences to the outcome, make sure you explain those too, but keep your focus on the outcome.

You’ll need to trust the people to whom you’re delegating. You have to extend that trust - thoughtfully, sensibly - and it will, in time, be returned. It takes two to delegate work; for that piece of work to be done well, you need the other person to accept it, not just take it on because you tell them to. Telling someone how they’re supposed to do a particular task is the quickest way of stopping people from accepting it and as Stephen Covey says “you cannot hold someone responsible for their results if you supervise their methods.”

That’s it for the inspiredblog for this year - we’re off to find a cosy nook in which to celebrate the festive season with a pile of books and some mulled wine. We’ll be back in 2011 to do it all again - in the meantime, have yourself a merry little Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Can you hear me?

Do you have a brother or a sister? When you were growing up, did they ever pretend not to hear you? What did you do? If you’re like most other people, your response probably went along these lines. Firstly, you repeated yourself: louder, perhaps with some attention-grabbing techniques like shouting into their ear or poking them. When that didn’t work, you probably appealed to your mum or dad. When that failed to get a response, probably you hit them.

Time after time, I’ve asked groups the same question and time after time, I’ve got the same answer. And the interesting thing is, we follow the same pattern as adults. When we feel ignored, we repeat ourselves, we try to gain attention; if that doesn’t work, we appeal – to managers, to unions, to regulators, to the media – and if that doesn’t work, we’re left with violence. Perhaps not physical violence but some other way of registering our dissatisfaction, like this wonderful news report.

Not being listened to really gets to us, which is why it’s such a surprise to me that managers I speak to say that not listening to the people in their teams is their number one mistake – the one they make the most often.

It’s understandable that it happens. Managers have so much to do, so many different demands on their time, that setting aside some time to just listen to people, to pay attention to them, can feel like a waste. There are so many emails to reply to, so many other things to do, that the temptation is to multi-task, to pretend to listen whilst doing other things. The problem is, we know when someone isn’t really listening. We can tell when they’re just going through the motions and not really paying attention and so, just as we did when we were kids, we repeat ourselves. Which, of course, is an even greater temptation for the manager not to listen – after all, they’ve already heard that, haven’t they?

It may feel like it takes a long time but listening – really listening, not just to what’s being said but also to how it’s being said, and noticing the things that aren’t being said, too – is much quicker in the long run. It can be the key to unlocking all kinds of prizes: to helping people feel engaged and valued at work, to new ideas or proposals, to really understanding people’s talents and skills.

It takes effort and discipline to listen but the reward is worth it. Try it, the next time someone talks to you. Stop what you’re doing and focus on them. Ask yourself how it feels to be them; what is it that they’re trying to tell you? Why are they telling you? What do they look like, what do they sound like? What aren’t they saying? Do you really understand what they’re saying and what it means to them? If not, ask questions until you do.

It doesn’t matter what technique you use – techniques can be studied and mastered easily, with practice. What really matters is your intent: do you really want to listen to them. Do you really believe they have something valid and useful to say? Until you can answer yes to those questions, you’ll keep making that same mistake of not listening and we’ll keep repeating ourselves – or worse!

Have a nice day

Despite the cold, I had to venture out of the house today to visit the Post Office; even in this interconnected world, sometimes it means far more to send an actual card than a virtual one. Visits to the Post Office fill me with dread and today’s was no exception. There were over forty people in a queue that doubled and trebled back on itself and I settled in for a long wait.

After checking Twitter, Facebook and sending some emails, I’d moved about three feet and that was mostly because two of the people in front of me had given up and left in disgust. It was as I was looking around me that I spotted something that called itself a “Post and Go” machine, tucked away in the corner. Figuring that it was worth giving up my place in a non-moving queue on the off-chance that the Post and Go machine might be the answer to my prayers, I wandered over to investigate.

I’m pretty tech-savvy, I like to think, but it was a bit complicated and I was clearly wearing my best bewildered expression because an employee came over and helped me out. She had the kind of bustling efficiency that I’ve come to associate with ladies of a certain age, usually nurses: kindly and brisk. She pressed all the right buttons - on the machine, that is - and got me on my way in about two minutes. The queue, I noticed with smug satisfaction, hadn’t moved at all in the meantime.

Let’s leave aside the fact that I’ve spent a lot of times in queues, waiting to post things, and not one of the assistants behind the counter has pointed out that I could have used the Post and Go machine. I don’t know whether that lady was employed specifically to help baffled customers - she certainly gave me the impression of being on her way to do other, more important, things. The transaction didn’t add any value in monetary terms, it didn’t add to the bottom line, but she left me with a totally different (and positive) experience of my visit to the Post Office. It struck me as a timely reminder, as we think of cutting costs and efficiency savings, that not everything can - or should - be measured in monetary terms. Sometimes providing good customer service, making someone’s day a little better or brighter, making the world even just a little better place, is worth more than money.

Are you managing?

Many years ago, I spent about six months or so as a manager. In common with many managers, it wasn’t a role that I had particularly coveted or even particularly wanted but, in order for my career to progress, management was the next step. And, to be honest, management looked pretty easy. I was going to be managing the team of which I was currently a member, so there were no problems there – I knew them and they knew me. I knew the job they did, so I wouldn’t have to learn anything about that. About the only difference I could see was that I’d be earning a bit more money and I’d have a new job title.

Of course, I know now that I was in the learning phase that development experts call “unconscious incompetence” – in other words, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Of course management looked easy – I didn’t know the first thing about it. Sadly, this state of blissful ignorance didn’t last very long and reality hit me like a bucket of cold water. Within the first day, I was brought face to face with a whole bunch of things that I didn’t know about management and I learned very quickly that I had a great deal to learn.

This is the phase that development professionals call “conscious incompetence” and it’s painful. It’s that point in development when you are suddenly confronted with the depths of your own ignorance. You’re suddenly painfully aware of just how much the job involves and how much you have to learn.

For me, that pain lasted for about six months; I tried to learn more about management on-the-job but the company I worked for at the time wasn’t particularly enlightened on the subject and so I was left to fend for myself. I was wholly unprepared and I failed: I was eventually put out of my misery and mercifully removed from the role.

It wasn’t a total failure, however, because it taught me a few lessons that have stayed with me. First and foremost, it taught me that management is actually a lot harder than it looks and people who do it well have a real skill and my undying respect. Secondly, it taught me that there often isn’t a lot of support out there for people who move into the role and that support is the one thing that can make a real difference. If I’d been able to find someone to support me through, to teach me what I needed to know and help me avoid a lot of the mistakes I was making, the transition might have been quicker and easier; it might even have been successful.

Since then, I’ve spoken to a lot of managers about the lessons they’ve learned and the mistakes they make and two consistent themes seem to come out. Consistently, managers berate themselves for not listening and for micro-managing. The odds are, if you’re a manager, you make these mistakes too, so over the next couple of weeks we’ll look at these two common mistakes and suggest some ways in which you could avoid them.

The view from here

I’ve been running some time management workshops recently and one of the things that we’ve been looking at is the direction in which people are heading, their longer-term goals. Having a direction is an excellent way (and possibly the only real way) of establishing your priorities, without which it’s impossible to organise yourself in any meaningful way. The thinking behind this is that it’s important to know where you want to get to otherwise, as Lewis Carroll pointed out, it doesn’t really matter which way you go.

I left school with weak A-levels and didn’t go to university. A few years ago, I decided that I was going to return to studying and get the degree I didn’t get a quarter of a century ago. As I was thinking about this, it struck me that it would take about six years to do this and that I would be 45 years old by the time I got my degree. That length of time felt daunting until I realised that, unless something dreadful happened, in six years I was going to be 45 anyway – I might as well be 45 with a degree.

My destination was the degree and I had a vague idea of what I was going to do with it when I began studying. An analogy that I often use is that of a pilot filing a flight plan: when the plane takes off, the pilot knows where he’s going to land – unless, of course, something unexpected happens. It’s a helpful analogy but, like any analogy, if you push it too hard it will break down. Since I made my choice, my outlook has changed and evolved. In the words of every contestant on the X-Factor, I’ve been on a journey and the view from where I am now is different to the view I had when I started studying.

Someone once told me that “to decide is to divide” – a yes to one option is automatically a no to another option. But that yes also opens up the possibility of a whole lot of other options. Because of the choice I made five years ago, I was alert to several opportunities that have come my way in the last few weeks, opportunities that have helped to clarify that vision I mentioned above. For us, the destination doesn’t have to be fixed in stone – we’re not locked into a flight plan and it’s possible for us to change our destination at any point. It’s what makes the journey exciting.

The Outlook is rosy

Say what you like about Microsoft but when it came to Outlook, they really came up with a great productivity tool. I recently purchased a MacBook, to use as my main home computer, and I’ve been disappointed to discover that I can’t find an Apple equivalent that’s as good as Outlook – to the extent that I’m seriously considering forking out a couple of hundred quid on Outlook for Mac.

Outlook does so many things and is used by so many people that I’m baffled by how little people know about what it can do. Few people ever seem to have had any training on how to use Outlook, beyond sending an email. As email, it seems, is the thing that most people struggle with, here are some techniques to help you get on top of your in-box.

The first tip to get on top of your in-box is to stay out of it – or, at least, not dive straight into it every day. When you open Outlook for the first time in the morning, it probably takes you to your in-box and the temptation is then to start dealing with those emails. Instead, set your opening folder to your Calendar (Tools>Options>Other>Advanced Options>Browse and choose the Calendar folder).

Next, stop Outlook telling you when it receives an email (Tools>Options>Preferences>E-Mail Options>Advanced E-Mail Options and uncheck the boxes under the heading “When new items arrive”). The key thing here is that you check your email when it’s convenient for you, not every time someone sends you a mail. If you’re doing the latter, you’re effectively treating email like another telephone – and you probably already have a couple of those.

Once you’ve freed yourself from the constant interruption of arriving email, you can concentrate on other things. A really good habit to get into is only checking your in-box every couple of hours or so – if you like, you can book out half an hour in the calendar to do this, so that you get into a routine.

Why do this? Well, if you were trying to lose weight, imagine how you’d feel if someone regularly waved a cream cake under your nose, telling you how delicious it was. You wouldn’t be very happy, would you? It would make losing weight that much harder. If you’re struggling with email, that’s the equivalent of what Outlook is doing to you. Take some control and give yourself the space to concentrate on your job - which is not, believe it or not, to handle/produce emails.

You have mail...

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by “abroad” – by which I mean, from my Anglo-centric viewpoint, any country that wasn’t the UK. I’m of a certain age, which means I predate email, when the only way of contacting people abroad was to send them airmail letter. I vividly remember the excitement of seeing one of those lovely blue envelopes hit the mat, the glamour and mystique of the strange address and the poetry of the phrase “par avion”. Weeks would pass between posting a letter and getting a reply, the excitement would build and the eventual letter would be read and re-read, digested, considered and then finally responded to.

All that’s changed now, of course. Nowadays, I can text friends on the other side of the world and get a reply almost instantly – assuming they’re awake, of course. I can share pictures of events with friends in at least six other countries (and comment on pictures of their events) through Facebook and Twitter. The waiting for the postman has gone, replaced by the much shorter wait for the ping of the email inbox. Lest this sound like an old man’s paean to a bygone age, let me be clear: what we’ve lost in romance we’ve more than gained in sheer convenience. I’m in touch with friends now in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible twenty – or even ten – years ago.

But there is, of course, a price to be paid. Email has revolutionised communication but it’s brought a whole slew of problems along with its tremendous advantages. And while email itself is steadily becoming less popular amongst what I suppose I must now call the “younger generation” it’s still the dominant form used in business. So if you feel overwhelmed by email, over the next couple of weeks I’ll be taking a look at some email best-practise to help alleviate the information overload you might be feeling.

We’ll start next week by looking at a few of the basic skills but if you have any hints and tips on how to make email – and, in particular, the main tool for using email, Microsoft’s Outlook – work better for you, do please drop me a line.