Showing posts with label managing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label managing. Show all posts
Monday, September 8, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
5 Must-Have Qualities Of The Modern Manager
As the world of work continues to change so do the qualities and characteristics of the managers who are going to be leading our companies. Work is not the same as it used to be and we are seeing dramatic changes in both behavior and technology not just in our personal lives but in our professional lives. This means that just because managers were successful in the past doesn’t mean they will be successful in the future. When it comes to evolving the way we work managers need to possess five qualities to help their organizations evolve and succeed in the future of work.
Follow from the front
The future management model is all about removing roadblocks from the paths of employees in order to help them succeed. This extends beyond managing people to empowering and engaging people.
The traditional idea of management was based on leading by fear and the notion of command and control. Employees used to work hard to allow their managers to succeed and now it’s the managers turn to make sure their employees succeed. As I’ve said many times, employees are the most valuable asset that any organization has. In the past managers said “jump” and the employees said, “how high?” Now, the managers are jumping with employees.
Understand technology
This isn’t the same as technical expertise. I’m not saying that it’s important for managers to all of a sudden become IT professionals. However, managers do need to understand the overall technology landscape and how it is impacting the way we work. This means having a good pulse of what is happening in the consumer web as well as understanding which social and collaborative technologies are making their way into the enterprise and what the implications of that are. Managers who have a good understanding of what is happening with technology will always be able to adapt and evolve ahead of the competition.
Lead by example
It used to be good enough for managers to say they supported something. A manager would just need to approve the budget and say “go for it.” When it comes to collaboration and the future of work that is no longer enough. Managers need to commit to more than just funding collaboration. They need to be the ones on the ground level using the same tools that the rest of the employees are using. There is no way that employees can change and evolve (nor should they) unless they see their managers doing the same.
Embrace vulnerability
This goes hand in hand with being open and transparent. Our organizations were modeled after the military and if there’s one thing that a commander wasn’t, that was vulnerable. However, times have changed and we aren’t running our organizations like the military anymore. We go our whole lives (especially men) learning how to be the opposite of vulnerable and we always have this “shield” up to keep people from seeing us when we are vulnerable. However, Brene Brown, author of “Daring Greatly,” says that vulnerability is about having the courage to show up and be seen. According to Brown, “Vulnerability is the absolute heartbeat of innovation and creativity. There can be zero innovation without vulnerability.” Being vulnerable isn’t about being weak it’s about being courageous; a key quality that every manager must have going forward.
Belief in sharing
Traditionally managers sat at the top of the organization and had access to all of the information required to make decisions. Managers would dole out the orders and the employees had to execute on those orders without asking any questions. Today managers cannot believe in hoarding information but in sharing information and collective intelligence. Managers need to make sure that the employees can connect to each other and to the information they need to get their jobs done, anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Managers now rely on employees to help make decisions instead of isolating them from this process.
What other qualities do you think the modern manager should possess?
Jacob is the author of the Amazon best-selling book, The Collaborative Organization: A Strategic Guide to Solving Your Internal Business Challenges Using Social and Collaborative Tools (McGraw Hill).
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Closing the CEO skills gap
When Toronto-based consultant Nick Forrest meets the chief executive
officers he counsels, the first question he asks is how many employees
they manage. On average, they say eight, referring to their direct
reports.
“No, you have 2,500 employees,” he will typically reply, “and your success depends on your ability to reach them and empower them. You have to figure out how to manage 2,500 employees.”In most cases, they have little idea how to do that. They have never led that many people, and managing 2,500 employees or 1,000 or even 500 is very different from leading 70 or 100. They are now the big boss, and this requires a change in mindset.
“A CEO coming into the job has to realize that, for the first time, they own it all. Until now, they always worked in someone else’s system. They blindly accepted that system,” he said.
CEOs like to complain about the skills gap in others. But Mr. Forrest said there’s a skills gap in chief executives and other top leaders. That gap is illuminated by three insights incoming CEOs must have:
1. Now I have more people to manage – not fewer, as might be assumed if looking only at direct reports. Managing those people can involve a quantum leap in complexity.
2. Now I’m accountable for everything. Yes, everything. The CEO is responsible for strategy, and how it is implemented. The CEO is also responsible for the structure of the organization, which she may not have given thought to before, but that may be the key to unlocking the potential of the employees working for her.
3. Now I need to manage more, not lead more. We continually hear that CEOs are leaders, not managers. But Mr. Forrest argues the opposite. “The higher you rise in an organization, and the more employees you influence, the more management matters,” he writes in How Dare You Manage?, his book about addressing the skills gap.
The CEO must now learn the craft of management. This involves understanding how to manage large groups of people in a way that provides clarity and consistency, so they can do their work well.
“CEOs who do not practise the craft of management fall into the trap of implementing haphazard initiatives that are not thought through and integrated into the overall organization’s structure and management and accountability processes. They kick these initiatives off with great fanfare and then watch them atrophy and die because the organization’s systems are unable to support them,” he writes.
While his book offers seven principles to close the CEO skills gap, he focused on two in an interview.
First, CEOs must define the work for employees. In many companies, he finds the employees have no idea what work they should be doing – in terms of how their everyday toil can help propel the company toward the intended strategy. “This applies whether there are 120 employees or 10,000. So you get employees spinning or trying to invent what they should do,” he said in the interview.
As a manager, you need to tell your employees what success looks like – specifically, what output you want from them. What activities they actually perform each day isn’t the focus. You must stress what the individual must achieve, which defines his role. As well, the employee needs to know five or six accountabilities – a word used to stress responsibilities for which leaders must hold people accountable – that are required to accomplish this role.
Before doing this with staff, you need to define your own role and accountabilities. In an example in the book, the CEO declares that the organization will be positioned as a national leader in its market. Accountabilities include creating the corporate strategy to achieve its business goals; building the talent and capability of employees so the company has a competitive advantage; ensuring operations perform at a high level; and establishing key performance indicators so organizational progress can be determined and all managers can manage effectively.
These priorities must cascade down throughout the organization. If not, employees will come up with work they think should be done but might undermine the actual strategy. “What is the role of a manager if not to define the work of their employee?” Mr. Forrest asks.
He also urges CEOs to adapt a series of management practices, highlighted by setting the context for employees, delegating tasks, monitoring and coaching. When delegating, employees must be aware of quantity, quality, time and resources, which he calls QQTR – how much of something needs to be produced, what standard is being applied to determine whether the work is good enough, when the activity needs to be completed, and what resources are required to complete the task.
“If you have that in place, you can manage and coach,” he said. “If you don’t have context, and haven’t set QTTR, how can you manage and coach?”
Harvey Schachter is a Battersea, Ont.-based writer specializing in management issues. He writes Monday Morning Manager and management book reviews for the print edition of Report on Business and an online work-life column Balance.
“No, you have 2,500 employees,” he will typically reply, “and your success depends on your ability to reach them and empower them. You have to figure out how to manage 2,500 employees.”In most cases, they have little idea how to do that. They have never led that many people, and managing 2,500 employees or 1,000 or even 500 is very different from leading 70 or 100. They are now the big boss, and this requires a change in mindset.
“A CEO coming into the job has to realize that, for the first time, they own it all. Until now, they always worked in someone else’s system. They blindly accepted that system,” he said.
CEOs like to complain about the skills gap in others. But Mr. Forrest said there’s a skills gap in chief executives and other top leaders. That gap is illuminated by three insights incoming CEOs must have:
1. Now I have more people to manage – not fewer, as might be assumed if looking only at direct reports. Managing those people can involve a quantum leap in complexity.
2. Now I’m accountable for everything. Yes, everything. The CEO is responsible for strategy, and how it is implemented. The CEO is also responsible for the structure of the organization, which she may not have given thought to before, but that may be the key to unlocking the potential of the employees working for her.
3. Now I need to manage more, not lead more. We continually hear that CEOs are leaders, not managers. But Mr. Forrest argues the opposite. “The higher you rise in an organization, and the more employees you influence, the more management matters,” he writes in How Dare You Manage?, his book about addressing the skills gap.
The CEO must now learn the craft of management. This involves understanding how to manage large groups of people in a way that provides clarity and consistency, so they can do their work well.
“CEOs who do not practise the craft of management fall into the trap of implementing haphazard initiatives that are not thought through and integrated into the overall organization’s structure and management and accountability processes. They kick these initiatives off with great fanfare and then watch them atrophy and die because the organization’s systems are unable to support them,” he writes.
While his book offers seven principles to close the CEO skills gap, he focused on two in an interview.
First, CEOs must define the work for employees. In many companies, he finds the employees have no idea what work they should be doing – in terms of how their everyday toil can help propel the company toward the intended strategy. “This applies whether there are 120 employees or 10,000. So you get employees spinning or trying to invent what they should do,” he said in the interview.
As a manager, you need to tell your employees what success looks like – specifically, what output you want from them. What activities they actually perform each day isn’t the focus. You must stress what the individual must achieve, which defines his role. As well, the employee needs to know five or six accountabilities – a word used to stress responsibilities for which leaders must hold people accountable – that are required to accomplish this role.
Before doing this with staff, you need to define your own role and accountabilities. In an example in the book, the CEO declares that the organization will be positioned as a national leader in its market. Accountabilities include creating the corporate strategy to achieve its business goals; building the talent and capability of employees so the company has a competitive advantage; ensuring operations perform at a high level; and establishing key performance indicators so organizational progress can be determined and all managers can manage effectively.
These priorities must cascade down throughout the organization. If not, employees will come up with work they think should be done but might undermine the actual strategy. “What is the role of a manager if not to define the work of their employee?” Mr. Forrest asks.
He also urges CEOs to adapt a series of management practices, highlighted by setting the context for employees, delegating tasks, monitoring and coaching. When delegating, employees must be aware of quantity, quality, time and resources, which he calls QQTR – how much of something needs to be produced, what standard is being applied to determine whether the work is good enough, when the activity needs to be completed, and what resources are required to complete the task.
“If you have that in place, you can manage and coach,” he said. “If you don’t have context, and haven’t set QTTR, how can you manage and coach?”
Harvey Schachter is a Battersea, Ont.-based writer specializing in management issues. He writes Monday Morning Manager and management book reviews for the print edition of Report on Business and an online work-life column Balance.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Micromanagement -- A Necessary Evil?
Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines micromanagement as “manage[ment] especially with excessive control or attention on details”.
I disagree — especially with the word – “excessive.”
I straddle two worlds. I am a big picture, innovator who loves to dream…think strategically…and then make it all happen. But I am also highly analytical, obsessive about details, and relish getting into the nits and grits of running a business. As my venture becomes increasingly complex, I’ve found that I can no longer be on top of everything at the most granular level. I find myself needing to both “zoom in” to ‘close focus’ and “zoom out” to ‘telephoto’ as the business demands.
I’d make the case that, as a leader, one has to both micro-manage AND manage from the 10,000 ft level where the big picture and strategic opportunities are in sharpest relief.
From a ‘close focus’ perspective…you can’t successfully manage a business if you don’t deal with the details. You have to take the deep dive to be on top of design and development, product quality, and customer support at a most fundamental level. You need to touch it…feel it. You also have to provide continuous speed and heading checks to the team as you execute versus fluid strategies that continually evolve – sometimes at rapid fire pace. If ever there is a place for micro-managing, an early to mid-stage start-up is it.
However, if you are always in ‘close focus’ mode, you will cripple growth – both your company’s and your team’s. When you are only “zoomed in,” you will not only miss the big picture, but you will smother your team’s creativity.
So, as a leader you also have to frequently “break surface” to take in the vistas and contemplate business conditions from an aerial view. You need to understand competitive, market and regulatory trends, customer needs, and the interrelationships between them all.
The critical bridge that permits a leader to effectively operate from both perspectives is a competent team. The team needs to be well trained, with a problem solving orientation and a crystal clear understanding of the business objectives they are tasked to deliver, and the targets against which their performance will be assessed.
“Zooming in” and “zooming out” is a balancing act. However, for effective leaders, the ability to do BOTH can be a critical determinant of success.
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Are You a Leader or a Manager? There's a Difference
The terms leadership and management are often
used interchangeably, but there is a huge difference between a leader
and a manager.
c.ronnie/Flickr
Understanding who your leaders are and who your managers are will help you create an organizational structure that not only addresses core business functions and needs but also morale and culture, which are equally if not more important. It will also help you identify where there might be gaps or people in the wrong "seats on the bus," to quote Jim Collins.
Leaders have a unique ability to rally employees around a vision. Because their belief in the vision is so strong, employees will naturally want to follow them. Leaders also tend to be willing to take risks in pursuit of the vision.
Managers, on the other hand, are more adept at executing the vision in a very systemic way and directing employees on how to do so. They can see all of the intricate moving parts and understand how to make them harmonize. Managers are usually very risk-adverse.
Deep down, a lot of entrepreneurs are leaders and not managers. I'm one of those. I don't think that I manage well, and if I had to focus solely on that it would be extremely painful for all involved. Conversely, if a manager is expected to lead a company, that company will be managed into a nice, tidy grave.
It's true that some managers can inspire and some leaders can systemically execute, but these are not their core strengths. For a start-up, the entrepreneur really has no choice but to be both leader and manager, which is usually okay since it's probably just him/her and one or two others.
Understanding which you are will help you make important, early choices about whom you need to grow that complement your strengths and ensure the success of your business.
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
What Should Today’s Executives and Managers Really Be Managing?
As an executive or leader in your organization, you’re managing many things: the company’s image, numerous projects, and a talented group of people. But you’re also managing many other important things, including the perception others have of you and your department, how distracted you and your team are on a daily basis, and many other things you may not even be aware of. For many people, these “other” things are just part of the job, how things have always been done, and the expected stressors of business.
But do they have to be that way?
Let’s start with perception. Why is managing perception important? Because perception is often more important than reality. And in fact, your reality will not be a happy one if you’re not managing perception.
You’ve likely seen many examples of how perception is more important than reality. For example, a stock might be beaten up horribly because of the way people view the company, whether that view of the company is accurate or not. The opposite is true as well. Consider what happened in the real estate industry. Home prices went much higher than they should have been because the perception of the home’s value was much higher than reality. This was a major contributing factor to a real estate bubble, which as all bubbles do, burst before everyone’s eyes.
So the point is that perception is something you have to constantly mange. Whose perception? Everyone’s—the C-level executives, the employees, the customer’s customer, and most important, your own.
Therefore, ask yourself, “How do I perceive myself?” Do you perceive yourself as trying to keep up? Trying to protect and defend? Trying to integrate the new?
How you perceive yourself is going to reflect how others perceive you. So you need to perceive yourself and everyone in your department as a major competitive advantage and as a major strategic asset for the organization. As long as that’s how you perceive yourself and your team, that’s how you’ll act, and that’s how others will see you as well.
Plug Into Your Future
Equally important to managing perceptions is managing distractions (a.k.a., change). The fact is that in today’s marketplace, change is coming at us fast…and it’s only getting faster. That means organizations will be facing more problems than ever before.
One thing we know for sure is that most distractions or changes come from the outside in—external factors impact the organization. This causes people to react, crisis manage, and continually put out fires. But to be a strategic asset to your company, you can’t simply be a crisis manager; you also have to become an opportunity manager. The question is, how do you do that? The answer is to become an opportunity manager and plug into the future.
To be an opportunity manager and strategic asset for your organization, distraction is the enemy. To provide major new competitive advantage and to create new products, markets, and services, distraction is the enemy. Unfortunately, we have never been more distracted.
Not only is everyone in your organization distracted, but so is everyone in your competitors’ organizations. But in a way, this is actually good news, because it means there’s a huge competitive advantage in pulling out of that mess of distraction. To do so, though, takes leadership and discipline.
Realize that our distraction level has gotten worse over the years rather than better. Why? It used to be that we had several different realities. We had our home reality with our spouse and children, and we had our work reality with our co-workers. Often the spouse and kids didn’t know what we specifically did at work, and all the people in our work reality didn’t know much detail about our home reality.
We also had our leisure friends, or our personal reality. And we belonged to a club or church group and had that reality. Finally, we had our vacation time reality.
As we went through life, we would go from one reality to the other. This was a good thing psychologically because it allowed us to recharge. Then, when we went from one reality to the other, we were refreshed and mentally sharp.
Today, technology has allowed all those realities to become one reality. But before you blame technology for this merging of realities, realize it’s not technology’s fault. Technology is neither good nor evil. It’s all about how we use it. We have the choice whether to plug in or unplug. Therefore, to reduce the level of distraction in your own life, you need to understand the power of unplugging on a regular basis.
Unfortunately, most people are afraid to unplug, even when they’re on vacation. They believe something might happen, so they have to be always connected to work. But this means they’re never really on vacation, and when they’re home, they’re not really home; they’re always working.
But if your people are always working, how well are they functioning? The answer: not very well. They’re certainly not as creative and innovative as they need to be. And if you’re not unplugging on a regular basis, then you’re not as creative and innovative as you need to be either.
Unplug and Recharge
Unplugging leads to better results in all areas of life. Realize that your mind is always working on a subconscious level to solve your business problems. No matter what you’re doing, your subconscious is at work. Have you ever noticed that your best business ideas tend to come when you’re working on or doing something else, whether walking the dog, woodworking, or playing with your kids? Great ideas often do not occur when you’re in the midst of trying to come up with one. It’s when you’re in one of those other realities that many business issues get solved. However, if you never unplug, you develop something called “blur,” when all the realities blend together and your mind never gets a chance to rest and recharge.
The good news is that you can be a responsible employee or executive and still have a life. But since there are no guidelines on how to do that, you have to create them for yourself, for your team, and for your organization.
First, it’s time to stop thinking in terms of just productivity. While you may think that working all the time means you’re more productive, you have to ask yourself if that’s really the case. Maybe you’re not able to be as creative and innovative as you need to be. Maybe you’re not tapping into the fresh perspective that unplugging yields you.
Next, be disciplined and create strict guidelines for yourself. At a certain time in the evening, close the laptop and turn the phone off. Detail when you’re allowed to work and when you’re not. This may seem extreme at first, but even though we’re adults, we often act like children and need the same rules and guidelines that kids do.
If your kids have an X-Box, a Playstation, a computer with unlimited Internet access, and a Facebook account, and if they can use these things whenever they want, they tend to act like the little monkey that keeps pushing the button that gives him food. That’s why parents set rules: “Do your homework before you play.” “Only one hour of TV after school.” “Turn off the computer at 9 p.m.” Because you want well-rounded kids, you encourage certain behaviors and activities. You send your kids to sports and dance lessons, help them learn a new language or how to play an instrument, and make sure they have enough time for rest. You know that your child will not be well-rounded if you let them decide what to do, as they’ll tend to focus on just a few things.
Adults are no different. That’s why you need to come up with your own guidelines in terms of when to plug in and when to unplug.
So is there a time to be thinking strategically, a time to be mapping out that next project, and a time to focus on innovation? Or are you going to get to those things “someday” because you’re constantly checking emails or troubleshooting?
Granted, you may not be able to change everyone else and get them to unplug, but you can start by changing yourself and then grow it outward. Can’t change the world? Then don’t. Can’t change your company? That’s okay. Start with yourself and then bring it to your team. They’ll bring it to their team, who will bring it to their customers, who will bring it to another group. Very soon, you and many others will start realizing the real benefit of taking control of your life, unplugging from work, and harnessing the creativity and innovation you never knew you had.
Your Future Awaits
At the end of the day, being able to manage perceptions and distractions is just as important as being able to manage people and projects. When you focus on managing what’s important, you’ll open yourself up to a whole new world of possibilities. So don’t wait for your future to unfold randomly, only to end up in a place you don’t want to be. Instead, invest the time into yourself and watch your success grow.
DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of Flash Foresight.
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Daniel BurrusTuesday, May 7, 2013
The Ripple Effects You Create as a Manager
Each one of us holds a set of beliefs and attitudes — a mindset —
that determines how we interpret and respond to situations. That mindset
shapes how we interact with others, and therefore it also affects the
people we work with — in ways both subtle and profound. A person with a
distrustful mindset, for example, views situations at work as
competitive and acts to advance his own interest at others' expense by
politicking: shifting allegiances, taking credit, assigning blame,
withholding or distorting information. These behaviors drive up stress
and burnout in others, and undermine organizational effectiveness. On
the other hand, a mindset of openness, trust, and generosity promotes
behaviors that have beneficial effects on others. In his new book Give and Take,
Wharton professor Adam Grant marshals an impressive body of scientific
evidence to show how a mindset of generosity radiates to yield broad
gains. Here's one powerful research example: a 20-year longitudinal
study of healthy employees found that people with social support from
coworkers were two and a half times less likely to die prematurely than
those without. So it's not an exaggeration to say that by being
supportive of people at work, you're not just brightening their day —
you're literally helping to save lives.
What you might not appreciate is that the socially-transmitted impact of your mindset extends well beyond those people with whom you interact directly in the workplace. It also touches those to whom they are
connected — most notably their partners and family members, but also
their larger networks and communities. A growing body of research
confirms that the stress employees experience at work crosses over to
and impairs the functioning and well-being of family members, even
impacting children's performance in school. This chain may unfold as
follows: a manager who believes that the best way to manage employees is
to "keep them on their toes" habitually makes unreasonable demands,
confronts employees publicly, provides little positive feedback, and
withholds information. These behaviors cause stress in the employees who
are subject to them. When they come home from work at night, the
employees are more likely to display anger and impatience. Their
spouses' stress levels rise and marital quality declines. Their children
learn to leave the parent alone in the evening rather than risk getting
yelled at, and their psychological adjustment suffers. And so on, into
schools and communities.
Happily, positive relationships in the workplace also have strong ripple effects. The person with a positive, open, and trusting mindset acts in ways that build emotional resources among work colleagues, which in turn enrich the well-being and good functioning of their families.
Let's look at how a fairly common mindset plays out in the workplace and beyond. For years, many managers have believed that a mark of a competent, committed employee is that he or she is able to leave family and personal life at the office door and, while "on the clock," focus 100% on work. This assumption is powerful; it shapes expectations about what it takes to succeed in a career, how companies assess their employees' value and performance, and the way managers behave.
The problem is, it's also flawed. Way back in 1977, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter coined the phrase "the myth of separate spheres" to describe the problematic way in which managers thought about the interface of employees' work and personal lives. It was a myth then, and it's a myth now. Human beings can't completely segment their lives; expecting them to do so both increases strain and diminishes the gains that can be realized by deliberately seeking wins across multiple areas of life. While companies are increasingly awakening to awareness of the mutual gains of work-life integration, the separate spheres mindset still persists.
What do separate spheres and integration/mutual gain mindsets look like in action? Two starkly contrasting examples from the early years of my own career come to mind. I spent five years in my twenties working for an organization, the first two in one department and the subsequent three in another. Although the departments were located right next to each other and performed related work, they differed considerably in terms of management style and culture. I recall a particular meeting in the first. During a few minutes of small talk while people entered the conference room and settled around the table, I chatted with a colleague whose wife was shortly expecting their first baby. Being a new mother myself, I commiserated with him about late-stage pregnancy and the anxieties leading up to birth. "Will you take paternity leave when the baby is born?" I asked this question knowing that the organization had a policy in place that offered new fathers a week off with pay upon the birth of a child. He smiled and hesitated for a moment before his boss scoffed from the other side of the table, "Paternity leave? I'll give you your paternity leave: a box of cigars." And just like that, the door was shut, not only for the expectant father, but also for anyone else who may have wanted to use the policy. Like many work-life policies, the paternity leave was subject to supervisor approval. But this manager's separate-spheres mindset precluded consideration of what might have been gained by a valued employee, his family, and ultimately by the organization in exchange for a single week off work.
Two years later, when my second child was born, I went back to work full-time after six weeks of maternity leave. I was exhausted and found it stressful to be away from my very young baby for so much time. It was apparent to me that much of the work I performed could be done from home with equal or greater efficiency and no adverse impact on anyone at my office. I decided to approach my boss and request to work from home two days per week for the next six months.
Somewhat to my surprise, he agreed. The fact that my manager was open and responded with trust and a willingness to experiment in order to meet both my needs and those of the department was transformative, not just for me, but for my family too. I cherished the opportunity to spend two extra days of each week with my baby. I was much happier and healthier. With my stress reduced, I approached my work with renewed enthusiasm. My husband, then a full-time student, had more time for studying and less work-life conflict. Importantly, I saw my manager as more multifaceted than I had previously appreciated, my respect for him deepened, and I felt a greater sense of commitment to the organization.
So what can you do to radiate positive, productive energy through employees at your workplace and out through their work-life networks? Here are a few ways:
Happily, positive relationships in the workplace also have strong ripple effects. The person with a positive, open, and trusting mindset acts in ways that build emotional resources among work colleagues, which in turn enrich the well-being and good functioning of their families.
Let's look at how a fairly common mindset plays out in the workplace and beyond. For years, many managers have believed that a mark of a competent, committed employee is that he or she is able to leave family and personal life at the office door and, while "on the clock," focus 100% on work. This assumption is powerful; it shapes expectations about what it takes to succeed in a career, how companies assess their employees' value and performance, and the way managers behave.
The problem is, it's also flawed. Way back in 1977, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter coined the phrase "the myth of separate spheres" to describe the problematic way in which managers thought about the interface of employees' work and personal lives. It was a myth then, and it's a myth now. Human beings can't completely segment their lives; expecting them to do so both increases strain and diminishes the gains that can be realized by deliberately seeking wins across multiple areas of life. While companies are increasingly awakening to awareness of the mutual gains of work-life integration, the separate spheres mindset still persists.
What do separate spheres and integration/mutual gain mindsets look like in action? Two starkly contrasting examples from the early years of my own career come to mind. I spent five years in my twenties working for an organization, the first two in one department and the subsequent three in another. Although the departments were located right next to each other and performed related work, they differed considerably in terms of management style and culture. I recall a particular meeting in the first. During a few minutes of small talk while people entered the conference room and settled around the table, I chatted with a colleague whose wife was shortly expecting their first baby. Being a new mother myself, I commiserated with him about late-stage pregnancy and the anxieties leading up to birth. "Will you take paternity leave when the baby is born?" I asked this question knowing that the organization had a policy in place that offered new fathers a week off with pay upon the birth of a child. He smiled and hesitated for a moment before his boss scoffed from the other side of the table, "Paternity leave? I'll give you your paternity leave: a box of cigars." And just like that, the door was shut, not only for the expectant father, but also for anyone else who may have wanted to use the policy. Like many work-life policies, the paternity leave was subject to supervisor approval. But this manager's separate-spheres mindset precluded consideration of what might have been gained by a valued employee, his family, and ultimately by the organization in exchange for a single week off work.
Two years later, when my second child was born, I went back to work full-time after six weeks of maternity leave. I was exhausted and found it stressful to be away from my very young baby for so much time. It was apparent to me that much of the work I performed could be done from home with equal or greater efficiency and no adverse impact on anyone at my office. I decided to approach my boss and request to work from home two days per week for the next six months.
Somewhat to my surprise, he agreed. The fact that my manager was open and responded with trust and a willingness to experiment in order to meet both my needs and those of the department was transformative, not just for me, but for my family too. I cherished the opportunity to spend two extra days of each week with my baby. I was much happier and healthier. With my stress reduced, I approached my work with renewed enthusiasm. My husband, then a full-time student, had more time for studying and less work-life conflict. Importantly, I saw my manager as more multifaceted than I had previously appreciated, my respect for him deepened, and I felt a greater sense of commitment to the organization.
So what can you do to radiate positive, productive energy through employees at your workplace and out through their work-life networks? Here are a few ways:
- Be a role model for work-life integration. Be open about your own challenges and strategies for fitting together your work, family, and personal life. Let your employees see you as a whole person.
- Appreciate others as whole people. The fact that everyone you work with has a life beyond work means that the team and the organization is embedded in a larger network of valuable relationships and shared goals. Appreciating the commitments that others have beyond work creates openness to looking for ways to create mutual work-life gains.
- Be willing to experiment. Keep the focus on what your team or organization is trying to achieve and how each person can best contribute to those results. Ask people what would help boost their ability to achieve desired work results while also increasing their well-being beyond work. When employees are involved in designing and implementing solutions, their commitment to making them work is strong.
- Offer socio-emotional support. Understanding of work-life challenges, sensitivity to how work can impact personal life, demonstrating respect, and offering encouragement go a long way in fostering positive relationships that help employees perform while keeping work-life conflict to a minimum.
- Be an advocate for work-life integration in your organization. Promote the cause of work-life integration. Talk about why you believe it's important to recognize and respond to employees' work-life challenges. Share success stories and examples with other managers to help decision-makers in the organization understand how to provide work-life support.
Monique Valcour
Monique Valcour is a professor of management at EDHEC Business School in France. Her research, teaching, and consulting focuses on helping companies and individuals craft high-performance, meaningful jobs, careers, workplaces, and lives. Follow her on Twitter @moniquevalcour.Sunday, April 14, 2013
Seven Rules for Managing Creative-But-Difficult People
Moody, erratic, eccentric, and arrogant? Perhaps — but you can't
just get rid of them. In fact, unless you learn to get the best out of
your creative employees, you will sooner or later end up filing for
bankruptcy. Conversely, if you just hire and promote people who are
friendly and easy to manage, your firm will be mediocre at best.
Suppressed creativity is a malign organizational tumour. Although every
organization claims to care about innovation, very few are willing to do
what it takes to keep their creative people happy, or at least,
productive. So what are the keys to engaging and retaining creative
employees?
1. Spoil them and let them fail: Like parents who celebrate their children's mess: show your creatives unconditional support and encourage them to do the absurd and fail. Innovation comes from uncertainty, risk, and experimentation — if you know it will work, it isn't creative. Creative people are the natural experimenters, so let them try and test and play. Of course, there are costs associated with experimentation — but these are lower than the cost of NOT innovating.
2. Surround them by semi-boring people: The worst thing you can do to a creative employee is to force them to work with someone like them — they would compete for ideas, brainstorm eternally, or simply ignore each other. That said, you cannot surround creatives with really boring or conventional people — they would not understand them, and fall out. In line with this, recent research indicates that teams made up of diverse members who are open to taking each others' perspective perform most creatively.
The solution, then, is to support your creatives with colleagues who are too conventional to challenge their ideas, but unconventional enough to collaborate with them. These colleagues will need to pay attention to details, mundane executional processes, and do the dirty work: Messi needs Busquets and Puyol; Ronaldo needs Alonso and Ramos.
3. Only involve them in meaningful work: Natural innovators tend to have more vision, research I've done indicates. They see the bigger picture and are able to understand why things matter (even if they cannot explain it). The downside to this is that they simply won't engage in meaningless work. This all-or-nothing approach to work mirrors the bipolar temperament of creative artists, who perform well only when inspired — and inspiration is fueled by meaning. This rule can also be applied to other employees: everyone is more creative when driven by their genuine interests and a hungry mind.
As novelist John Irving said, "the reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me". At the same time, in any organization there will be employees who are less interested in, well, doing interesting work; they are satisfied with simply clocking in and out, and are incentivized by external rewards. Companies should ensure that trivial or meaningless work is assigned to these employees.
4. Don't pressure them: Creativity is usually enhanced by giving people more freedom and flexibility at work. If you like structure, order and predictability, you are probably not creative.
However, we are all more likely to perform more creatively in spontaneous, unpredictable circumstances — because we cannot rely on our habits. Don't constrain your creative employees; don't force them to follow processes or structures. Let them work remotely and outside normal hours; don't ask where they are, what they are doing or how they do it. This is the secret to managing Don Draper, and why he never went to work for a bigger competitor. This is also why so many top athletes fail to make the transition from a small to a big team, and why business founders are usually unhappy to remain in charge of their ventures once they are acquired by a bigger company.
5. Pay them poorlyDon't overpay them: There is a longstanding debate about the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Over the past two decades, psychologists have provided compelling evidence for the so-called "over-justification" effect, namely the process whereby higher external rewards impair performance by depressing a person's genuine or intrinsic interest. Most notably, two large-scale meta-analyses reported that, when tasks are inherently meaningful (and creative tasks are certainly in this condition), external rewards diminish engagement. This is true in both adults and children, especially when people are rewarded merely for performing a task. However, providing positive feedback (praises) does not harm intrinsic motivation, so long as the feedback is perceived as genuine. [Editor's note: This is clearly a controversial point; Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic has expanded on it in his new article, "Does Money Really Affect Motivation? A Review of the Research." In line with his comments in the thread below, we've also updated the header on this section to be more accurate.]
The moral of the story? The more you pay people to do what they love, the less they will love it. In the words of Czikszentmihalyi, "the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake." More importantly, people with a talent for innovation are not driven by money. Data from our research archive, which includes over 50,000 managers from 20 different countries, indicates quite clearly that the more imaginative and inquisitive people are, the more they are driven by recognition and sheer scientific curiosity rather than commercial needs.
6. Surprise them: Few things are as aggravating to creatives as boredom. Indeed, creative people are prewired to seek constant change, even when it's counterproductive. They take a different route to work every day, even if it gets them lost, and never repeat an order at a restaurant, even if they really liked it. Creativity is linked to higher tolerance of ambiguity.
Creatives love complexity and enjoy making simple things complex rather than vice-versa. Instead of looking for the answer to a problem, they prefer to find a million answers or a million problems. It is therefore essential that you keep surprising your creative employees; failing that, you should at least let them create enough chaos to make their own lives less predictable.
7. Make them feel important: As T.S. Eliot noted, "most of the trouble in this world is caused by people wanting to be important". And the reason is that others fail to recognize them. Fairness is not treating everyone the same, but like they deserve. Every organization has high and low potential employees, but only competent managers can identify them. If you fail to recognize your employees' creative potential, they will go somewhere where they feel more valued.
A final caveat: even when you are able to manage your creative employees, it does not mean that you should let them manage others. In fact, natural innovators are rarely gifted with leadership skills. There is a profile for good leaders, and a profile for creative people — and they are rather different. Steve Jobs had better relationships with gadgets than people, and most Google engineers are utterly disinterested in management. One of the reasons for the rapid plateau of start-ups is that their founders tend to remain in charge. They should learn from Mark Zuckerberg who brought in Sheryl Sandberg to make up for his own leadership deficits. Research confirms the stereotypical view that corporate innovators — intrapreneurs — exhibit many of the psychopathic characteristics that prevent them from being effective leaders: they are rebellious, anti-social, self-centered and often too low in empathy to care about the welfare of others. But manage them well, and their inventions will delight us all.
1. Spoil them and let them fail: Like parents who celebrate their children's mess: show your creatives unconditional support and encourage them to do the absurd and fail. Innovation comes from uncertainty, risk, and experimentation — if you know it will work, it isn't creative. Creative people are the natural experimenters, so let them try and test and play. Of course, there are costs associated with experimentation — but these are lower than the cost of NOT innovating.
2. Surround them by semi-boring people: The worst thing you can do to a creative employee is to force them to work with someone like them — they would compete for ideas, brainstorm eternally, or simply ignore each other. That said, you cannot surround creatives with really boring or conventional people — they would not understand them, and fall out. In line with this, recent research indicates that teams made up of diverse members who are open to taking each others' perspective perform most creatively.
The solution, then, is to support your creatives with colleagues who are too conventional to challenge their ideas, but unconventional enough to collaborate with them. These colleagues will need to pay attention to details, mundane executional processes, and do the dirty work: Messi needs Busquets and Puyol; Ronaldo needs Alonso and Ramos.
3. Only involve them in meaningful work: Natural innovators tend to have more vision, research I've done indicates. They see the bigger picture and are able to understand why things matter (even if they cannot explain it). The downside to this is that they simply won't engage in meaningless work. This all-or-nothing approach to work mirrors the bipolar temperament of creative artists, who perform well only when inspired — and inspiration is fueled by meaning. This rule can also be applied to other employees: everyone is more creative when driven by their genuine interests and a hungry mind.
As novelist John Irving said, "the reason I can work so hard at my writing is that it's not work for me". At the same time, in any organization there will be employees who are less interested in, well, doing interesting work; they are satisfied with simply clocking in and out, and are incentivized by external rewards. Companies should ensure that trivial or meaningless work is assigned to these employees.
4. Don't pressure them: Creativity is usually enhanced by giving people more freedom and flexibility at work. If you like structure, order and predictability, you are probably not creative.
However, we are all more likely to perform more creatively in spontaneous, unpredictable circumstances — because we cannot rely on our habits. Don't constrain your creative employees; don't force them to follow processes or structures. Let them work remotely and outside normal hours; don't ask where they are, what they are doing or how they do it. This is the secret to managing Don Draper, and why he never went to work for a bigger competitor. This is also why so many top athletes fail to make the transition from a small to a big team, and why business founders are usually unhappy to remain in charge of their ventures once they are acquired by a bigger company.
5. Pay them poorlyDon't overpay them: There is a longstanding debate about the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Over the past two decades, psychologists have provided compelling evidence for the so-called "over-justification" effect, namely the process whereby higher external rewards impair performance by depressing a person's genuine or intrinsic interest. Most notably, two large-scale meta-analyses reported that, when tasks are inherently meaningful (and creative tasks are certainly in this condition), external rewards diminish engagement. This is true in both adults and children, especially when people are rewarded merely for performing a task. However, providing positive feedback (praises) does not harm intrinsic motivation, so long as the feedback is perceived as genuine. [Editor's note: This is clearly a controversial point; Dr. Chamorro-Premuzic has expanded on it in his new article, "Does Money Really Affect Motivation? A Review of the Research." In line with his comments in the thread below, we've also updated the header on this section to be more accurate.]
The moral of the story? The more you pay people to do what they love, the less they will love it. In the words of Czikszentmihalyi, "the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake." More importantly, people with a talent for innovation are not driven by money. Data from our research archive, which includes over 50,000 managers from 20 different countries, indicates quite clearly that the more imaginative and inquisitive people are, the more they are driven by recognition and sheer scientific curiosity rather than commercial needs.
6. Surprise them: Few things are as aggravating to creatives as boredom. Indeed, creative people are prewired to seek constant change, even when it's counterproductive. They take a different route to work every day, even if it gets them lost, and never repeat an order at a restaurant, even if they really liked it. Creativity is linked to higher tolerance of ambiguity.
Creatives love complexity and enjoy making simple things complex rather than vice-versa. Instead of looking for the answer to a problem, they prefer to find a million answers or a million problems. It is therefore essential that you keep surprising your creative employees; failing that, you should at least let them create enough chaos to make their own lives less predictable.
7. Make them feel important: As T.S. Eliot noted, "most of the trouble in this world is caused by people wanting to be important". And the reason is that others fail to recognize them. Fairness is not treating everyone the same, but like they deserve. Every organization has high and low potential employees, but only competent managers can identify them. If you fail to recognize your employees' creative potential, they will go somewhere where they feel more valued.
A final caveat: even when you are able to manage your creative employees, it does not mean that you should let them manage others. In fact, natural innovators are rarely gifted with leadership skills. There is a profile for good leaders, and a profile for creative people — and they are rather different. Steve Jobs had better relationships with gadgets than people, and most Google engineers are utterly disinterested in management. One of the reasons for the rapid plateau of start-ups is that their founders tend to remain in charge. They should learn from Mark Zuckerberg who brought in Sheryl Sandberg to make up for his own leadership deficits. Research confirms the stereotypical view that corporate innovators — intrapreneurs — exhibit many of the psychopathic characteristics that prevent them from being effective leaders: they are rebellious, anti-social, self-centered and often too low in empathy to care about the welfare of others. But manage them well, and their inventions will delight us all.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is an international authority in personality profiling and psychometric testing. He is a Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL), Vice President of Research and Innovation at Hogan Assessment Systems, and has previously taught at the London School of Economics and New York University. He is co-founder of metaprofiling.com.
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