Webster's defines the verb manage as: to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of.
To direct is: to regulate the activities or course of; to dominate and determine the course of.
The first thing you must understand about "managing people" is that the phrase itself is an oxymoron: people cannot be "managed".
Most of us acquired our image of management from the 1950's business model. The boss was a kind of enlightened despot who knew all the answers and would tell his employees what to do how to do it, and when to do it. The manager's focus was on controlling the activities of his employees.
Over the past 40 years, this management model has been replaced in more progressive companies, due in part to the work of people like Peter F. Drucker, W. Edwards Deming, Tom Peters, and others.
Stephen Covey explains the choice managers face in his book, First Things First:
"The choice ... boils down to a choice between "control" and "release" styles of thinking and managing. If our paradigm is one of control, we assume that people have to be tightly supervised if they're going to produce or perform well. If our paradigm is one of release, our assumption is that, given the freedom, opportunity, and support, people will bring out the highest and best within them and accomplish great things."
Max DePree, in his best-selling book Leadership Is An Art, says that the art of leadership is in liberating people to do what is required of them; in removing the obstacles that prevent them from doing their jobs.
Why have some of the most progressive, productive -- and profitable -- companies of the 90's abandoned the old "control" management model in favor of a "release" paradigm?
For one thing, employees themselves have changed. As Michael LeBoeuf points out in his book Getting Results:
Nobody works for you. Everybody works for themselves. Your employees don't care about what you want one-tenth as much as they care about what they want.
I have been saying this for some time now in conversations with clients on the subject of employees. Rarely, though, do I get the impression that people really get the full implication contained in the statement that your employees are not working for you, they are working for themselves. As managers, you will nod your heads and agree that this is true, and then continue to act as if your employees "should" do exactly what you tell them to do. Whether you're prepared to admit it or not, you even expect them to share your vision for your business, be just as excited about it as you are, to be willing to work as hard as you do, and be as conscientious as you are. Often, you even expect them to read your mind and handle the situations they face in the same way you (after the fact) think you would handle them.
I'm not suggesting that you are acting like some kind of tyrant around your employees. On the contrary, you want them to like you, and you often go out of your way to accommodate them, to try to be flexible for them, to make allowances for them. In fact, that's part of the problem:
The primary reason that there is a gap between what you expect from your employees and what you get from them is that you yourself, to begin with, are not clear about what it is that you want. Beyond that, what little clear thinking you have done about the results you want your employees to produce, you have not communicated effectively to them.
Michael LeBoeuf says that millions of people go to work every day and flounder aimlessly because they don't clearly understand their job's goals and/or they see no relationship between performance and rewards.
Max DePree says that "the first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader must be a servant and a debtor."
"Defining Reality" means communicating clearly what the specific results are that you have hired them to accomplish. One of the best ways to do this is to negotiate with your employee a "Goals/Rewards Agreement" (see following page) that states, in writing, a specific objective, the qualities they must develop in order to achieve the objective, and the rewards they agree will motivate them to achieve it, and which you have agreed to provide when they do.
In other words, your job is to create a reward system through which your employees get what they want, you get what you want, and the right things get done.
GOALS/REWARDS AGREEMENT
I, _______________________________________, agree to work toward achieving the following
results by ___________________________________________________.
Target Date
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
To make this project a winner, we must emphasize:
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
My reward for successfully achieving this goal will be:
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Agreed on ___________________________ by:
Date
______________________________
Achiever
______________________________
Manager
- QUALITIES/BEHAVIORS TO BE DEVELOPED:
1. Solid Solutions vs. Quick Fixes
2. Risk Taking vs. Risk Avoiding
3. Applied Creativity vs. Mindless Conformity
4. Decisive Action vs. Paralysis by Analysis
5. Smart Work vs. Busywork
6. Simplification vs. Needless Complication
7. Quietly Effective Behavior vs. Squeaking Joints
8. Quality Work vs. Fast Work
9. Loyalty vs. Turnover
10. Working Together vs. Working Against
REWARDS:
- Money
- Recognition
- Time Off
- A Piece of the Action*
- Favorite Work
- Advancement
- Freedom**
- Personal Growth
- Fun
- Prizes
* Employees who become owners act like owners
** I don't care how the job gets done as long as I get results
You can begin the process which leads to a workable goals/rewards agreement with your employees by asking them to write their answers to the following questions in a total of 250 words (1 page) or less:
1. What results do I produce in my job?
2. Why am I producing them?
3. What am I doing that is unnecessary?
I say that this is a process because the need to communicate with your employees is ongoing. It will never end. One of the things you owe to your employees is the opportunity to grow with you. Teach them what you know about your business. Talk to them about your experiences and what you have learned from them. The more you can educate them, the more valuable they will be to you.
"This is the true joy in life ... being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy ... I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It's a sort of splendid torch which I've got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
George Bernard Shaw