Be an outstanding manager – by doing a few important things outstandingly well

That’s why I say that managers hold the key to long term success. It is well motivated, committed and involved people who deliver innovation, productivity efficiencies and service excellence and these rich prizes will only be accessed if managers play their part.

So what is the part managers must play? To begin with let me say that managers must give as much, or arguably, more attention to managing people as they give managing or supervising processes. This is not as easy to bring about as it may appear however as many managers are appointed because they have excelled in managing a process or function. Promotion to the role of manager and the remuneration and status benefits that come with this is often the only tangible reward and recognition for their past efforts and, thus, a way of retaining their services.

It also has to be said that most organisations measure the performance of managers in terms of how well they manage processes and functions with clear targets being set for such things, as sales, productivity, profitability and customer service. Few have clear measurements for how well they manage and get the best out of people so given these conditions it is hardly surprising that it is the former that is higher on the agenda. (Herein lies a message for organisations who might consider heading the message of quality guru Philip Crosby , “What gets measured gets done!”)

It is my contention and fervent belief that the main focus and attention of managers should be directed to getting the best out of people and for this reason I would like to offer some simplistic but well proven guidance. Instead of encouraging an all embracing portfolio of management or leaderships techniques and qualifications may I ask you to consider the Pareto Principle or, as it often referred to, the 80-20 rule. Just as Vilfredo Pareto observed in the early 1900’s when he observed, amongst other things, that 80% of the peas in his garden came from 20% of the crop. Similarly, it is not uncommon for 80% of an organisation’s sale to come from around 20% of clients.

It is with the above in mind that I advocate managers focus on doping three things outstandingly well to achieve outstanding results:

1. Develop a high level of self awareness in terms of your management style and adopt a strategy for addressing any shortcomings.

2. Attain a deep understanding of the talents and motivations of each of the people you manage and put this information to good use.

3. Achieve more through others every day by assigning the right work to the right people and use teams as a means of bringing about improvements or solving complex problems.

If you are still with me please indulge me a little further while I expand on the above.

How to develop a high level of self awareness in terms of your management style
In the early days of developing my retail business I was introduced to a man called John Adair , who developed a model called Action-centred Leadership, a lovely man who I later came to know very well, and someone who set me thinking more deeply about my management style. This was done by him, first raising my awareness of the fact that successful managers needed to achieve a balance between, achieving tasks, building teams and developing individuals. Easy, I thought, let’s do it. Before I had a chance to unleash this new approach on my unsuspecting staff however John invited me to complete a new questionnaire he had just developed to elicit the natural management style of managers. I duly completed the questionnaire and awaited the results with enthusiastic anticipation and then, I was confronted with the reality: I discovered that my natural approach was almost entirely task focused and I wasn’t even consciously aware of it. Some honest reflection however confirmed that this was absolutely true and lead to me considering the consequences. It also helped me understand why I had managed to get the best out of some people, who mainly had a similar pre-disposition but also explained why I had not been so successful, or to be honest, pretty hopeless in getting the best out of others, and thereby falling a long way short of being an outstanding manager. It was this initial insight that set me on the road to becoming a far better manager, although my colleagues will insensitively claim that it is still work in progress.

It was this personal experience that gave me the motivation to encourage and help other managers to raise their awareness of their natural management style. Furthermore, in collaboration with my long standing friend Meredith Belbin and the IT boffins at Belbin Associates we are now working on a new reporting facility to help managers understand their natural management style which includes obtaining the observational feedback of others. This facility is still a few months away however so in the meantime may I advocate that you take a good look at your management style using self reflection and any tools you can find that will be helpful. This will help you avoid basking in a world of self-delusion and management mediocrity by addressing any shortcoming you have and thereby ensuring that everyone you manage makes a full contribution.

Gain a deep understanding of the talents and motivations of each of the people you manage
One of my favourite management books is First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Kurt Coffman , because it draws on 25 years or so research into what makes great managers. There are many important messages in this book for managers but the “rule” that they advocate should be broken that resonates most with me is the one that extols, “Treat people as you like to be treated.” Buckingham and Coffman proclaim that great managers need to “Treat people as they like to be treated.” Here lies a very profound message that contains irrefutable sound advice as far as I am concerned. If it also make sense to you this should lead to us wanting to elicit exactly how each of the people we manage like to be treated.

One way of going about this is of course to use your eyes and ears and to talk with each of the people you manage to understand their natural motivations and preferences more clearly. To this you can add more refined tools such as psychometric tests and behaviour profiling. The illustration in figure 1 shows you one of the eight pages from the Belbin individual report that I use and comment to managers.

The important thing is that managers must have the deep understanding required to get the best out of each person. It is no longer sufficient to deploy macro management principles as whilst the established principles of achievement and recognition will always be important motivators the manifestation of these will be very different from person to person.

Achieve more through others every day by assigning the right work to the right people

This is such a basic and obvious thing that I feel that I may be perceived as being patronising by daring to mention it. The truth is however that research my organisation has conducted and the research of others reveals that most managers are not delegating well, if by well we mean:

1. People are clear about exactly what is expected of them.

2. Work is assigned to teams as well as individuals.

3. The standard of performance can be objectively measured.

4. The process is dynamic and current rather than static and top down only.

Before appraising how well you do this as a manager or organisation maybe it will be helpful to expand a bit on the above four imperatives.

For me the lack of clarity is a big issue, particularly when it comes to how much freedom of discretion is being assigned. I frequently hear or read of situations when the manager chastises the jobholder for not using discretion when things haven’t turned out right. The jobholder may protest “But you told me to follow the procedure.” But this leads to a situation whereby both parties end up feeling frustrated and even angry. Then the reverse scenario occurs where the jobholder used discretion but things didn’t work out as required. In this situation the manager may berate the jobholder by saying “You should have followed the procedure.” or, “You should have asked me about this before taking such a decision.” These are not at all untypical scenarios and lead to managers retaining responsibility for all decision and enduring high workloads while jobholders feel untrusted and frustrated.

The issue of assigning work to teams is something of a paradox as the term Team is arguably the most over-used euphemism in corporate speak. It is used to describe any assembly or collection of people, and even animals with almost reckless abandon maybe as a way of proclaiming to the world that we are all in this together striving for each other. Oh, but it were true. In many circumstances the term Team is no more than a hierarchical or functional work group with most of the discretional authority being vested in the most senior person.

Add to this observation the fact that vast amounts of money is spent, or maybe more accurately, wasted on team building and team development when the truth is that it is only during the training that the team operate as a no-hierarchical team with full discretionary authority for achieving a shared collective goal or objective.

Outstanding managers will address this abnormality by delegating or assigning work to carefully selected teams that have full discretionary powers for achieving clearly defined collective and shared goals or objectives

When it comes to reviewing performance I find that so often this lack of clarity about what is expected of a jobholder leads to more frustrations and conflict. An example of this was when one of my clients asked me to consider the results of a recent employee survey. One of the questions focused on how satisfied people were with the performance review. Suffice to say the results revealed that things were not well. I offered to do a bit of probing as to why people were so dissatisfied about the way their review had been conducted. Among the many regular criticisms such as, “My manager didn’t seem to be interested in doing it and kept looking at his watch.”. Others reported something along the lines of, “My manager seemed to have a different view about what my job is.” and, “We just has ended up having an argument as a result of me feeling I had done a good job and my manager feeling I had messed up.”

I don’t think I need to expand on how the above scenario impacts on the effectiveness of managers and the motivation of the people they manage.

Finally, there is the issue of many managers and organisations relying on static methods of defining and communicating what is expected of people, such as job descriptions. My experience of these is that they are nearly always out of date. (Do we really expect managers to re-write or update them on a weekly basis?) They also tend to be off the shelf and job title related rather than specific to the jobholder. I also find they tend to be full of ambiguities and perpetuate many of the shortcomings described in the previous chapters. In fact, I often wonder if in today’s fast and constantly changing world of work the job description in its traditional form is past its sell-by date.

What we need now is a dynamic approach to delegation which embraces each one of the shortcomings I have described and one which also engages the jobholder in helping the manager understand what is needed from his/her perspective as being close to the action.

For this reason Dr Meredith Belbin and I have devised a new colour coded method to support dynamic and effective delegation as per shown in Figure 2. This has the advantage of being simple but effective and has proven to be a valuable tool for managers who wish to become outstanding.

I hope my comments and reflections may provoke you to reflect on your effectiveness as a manager and, more importantly, make a few changes to your approach that will set you on the road to becoming an outstanding manager.

Barrie Watson – September 2011

Director: CERT Consultancy & Training and Belbin Associates, UK

Associate partner: Edurom, Romania.

[1]Philip Bayard "Phil" Crosby, (Wheeling, June 18, 1926 – Winter Park, August 18, 2001) was a businessman and author who contributed to management theory and quality management practices.

[1]In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M. Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle. While it may be misnamed, Pareto's Principle or Pareto's Law as it is sometimes called, can be a very effective tool to help you manage effectively.

[1]John Adair is a renowned leadership theorist. He devised his Action Centred Leadership Model following observations of leaders and their followers during the 1970s. Adair captured his theory in a 3 circle diagram; in which each of the circles overlapped.

[1]First, Break All the Rules, subtitled, What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently (1999) is a book authored by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman who try to offer solutions to better employee satisfaction with the help of examples of how the best managers handle employees./